Call for content!
The FMN Strategic Communications and Marketing committee members welcome your news and event notices, learning and service opportunities, stories, resource reviews, (and other ideas–we are open to creative thinking). We curate our content, so, yes, you’ll work with an editor, but the exchange will simply polish your pearl.
Send your content or requests to Marilyn Kupetz: [email protected], with the header: FMN website content
Participating in the City Nature Challenge was an enlightening and enjoyable experience in several ways.
First, I was somewhat surprised at how many unique living things you can spot when you are really intent on trying to find as many as you can, and slow down and “get into the weeds” looking for things!
Second, I found that looking at the species identified by others participating in the Challenge was a good source of information for identifying things that I saw. A good example for me was the wool sower gall wasp. I really had no idea where to start looking to see what this unique colorful little ball might be, and then there was a picture of it in the species list identified by others. Several days have passed and no one has confirmed my ID. My pictures are a bit blurry, but I think there’s nothing else this could be. I found who the leading identifier of this species was, hoping to engage him in its identification, but could not find a way in INaturalist to try to contact him.
Lastly, I’ve already learned some things to improve my performance next year. This year I limited myself to submitting only one observation of a species, even if I saw it in more than one area that I went to during the Challenge to make observations. I now know that multiple observations are good to include to help define spatial distributions of observed species. I also realized that while I received training in how to make observations in INaturalist prior to the event, I should have sought out training in how to do identifications so I could more actively participate in that aspect of it also.
What great advice, Bill. It’s buried here, though. Okay if we pull it out and post it as a short article?
Certainly Marilyn
It seemed odd to me that the link asking us to share insights on the City Nature Challenge directed me here, but that was where it seemed to want such items posted so I put it here. I’m more than happy for it to be better placed. Was there supposed to be somewhere else I should have been directed to provide CNC insights?