Projektin City Nature Challenge 2021: Geelong Päiväkirja

The close off for making observations is midnight tonight. Thanks everyone for being out and about taking photos of our region's flora and fauna.

Note , you still have until the end of next weekend to upload observations. Although it is best to do so at the earliest opportunity to allow others to complete the identifications.

The weather has been kind to us on the first three days with the fourth being reasonable with some overcast. We almost got 700 species and observations is approaching 2000.

Well done.

Regards Rod aka rover-rod

Received the following email from the International organisers.

"Hello incredible City Nature Challenge organizers!

AMAZING work! For the very first time, we made over 1 million observations in 4 days! And we had more people than ever participate - more than 50,000! We'll send out the "final" results on Monday, but we are SO IMPRESSED with all of your hard work and all the energy you've put into making the City Nature Challenge happen in your cities.

We just wanted to send out a quick reminder to add some interesting/unusual/fun finds from your city to the observation spreadsheet.

We will use some of these in our results announcement and press release, so if you'd like to see your city highlighted, be sure to look through the observations from your city and add those with a good story to this sheet!

Also, if you have photos of people participating in the City Nature Challenge, please share them! We will use these photos forever and ever in promoting the CNC, we LOVE having photos from around the world!

Thanks - look for an email from us around 2-3pm PDT on Monday, 10 May with the results announcement!

Alison, Lila, and Amy

Alison- California Academy of Science"

So if you have an interesting observations for our region or people photos, please send me the link for the observations via iNaturalist messager or via my email rod.lowther@live.com
I can then up load to the organisers google drive.
Note results will become available for the CNC on Tuesday morning 8.00 am our time and I will post a summary on the project later in the morning.
Thanks everyone for your efforts in finalising the uploading of observations.
Note,we still have 3 days to now finalise identifications.

Regards Rod (rover-rod)

I have set up a project for observations made during the CNC that still require an ID.

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/cnc-2021-geelong-need-identification

Looking at the species list, you can see what observations have had multiple sightings but for each observation requires a person to confirm the identification. Appreciate if you can review the list and see those observations you can add an identication.

Here is the list https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=105846&ttl=900&v=1620347583000&place_id=any&verifiable=any&view=species
Note many observations are at genus level and even having a second person confirming the identification might allow us to set to Research Grade if the identification to species is technically not feasible.

For example we had 5 Black Mussels sightings - Genus Mytilus - in the list, however we know that to go to species level would require DNA profile. So these have now been set to Research Grade at genus level following the confirmation ID.

Thanks Rod

As was the case for 2020, the best and most popular photograph award for the CNC Geelong will be awarded to the photo that has most "likes" / 'Favs". A link with a list of current contenders follows:
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations?place_id=any&popular&project_id=city-nature-challenge-2021-geelong&verifiable=any

The voting will be close at the end of Friday the 14th of May.
You can add a vote by reviewing observations and clicking on the star - Be the first to fav or it will list who has already faved. This is located under the Observation map.
Fav criteria is open in that you might like the quality of the photo or the nature subject.

There are again some excellent photos in the CNC Geelong Project from which to choose.

Regards Rod

@helenschofield @mhewish

Well done identifiers!!

The project surpassed 70 % Research Grade level for observations which is our benchmark and an excellent performance. The average across all locations, participants involved in the CNC worldwide is 43%. Following a quick check of about 12 cities, I could find only one other location with a very high Research Grade rating. That was Moscow which had 10,560 observations but only 830 species whereas Geelong had a species count 1077.

A pleasing aspect of the Identification process is that we had only 19 Mavericks (last year CNC – 96) and of the 19, 17 were overridden by additional Identifiers to arrive at the observation getting to Research Grade level on the 2/3 thirds rule meaning 3 people are needed to endorse an identification.

Again, I like to thank the identifiers in following up over the last 7 days of the event and diligently checking species information to arrive this excellent position.

Best wishes Rod

The organisers now have our final numbers and will include them in their event report being issued early Tuesdays our time.
In terms of number of observations, we look like being around 100th in a field of more that 300 participating cities.

During the CNC, we recorded 23 observations of 12 vulnerable/ endangered listed species. See link for details. https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations?place_id=any&project_id=city-nature-challenge-2021-geelong&subview=table&threatened&verifiable=any&view=species

For the International note worthy observations report, on behalf of the Geelong Region, I have listed the Hooded Plover observation by Andrea Dennett, the Gang-gang Cockatoo - Graham Possingham , the Otway Black Snail -Kelly Clitheroe and the beautifully coloured Rainbow x Scaly -breasted Lorikeet photographed by Jeff Dagg.
Still happy to receive other nominations - refer earlier journal

Cheers Rod

Summary of the CNC 2021 from the International organisers is below. Note One of Helen Schofield's Orchid observation is shown in the highlights from around the world. Local summary will follow later today.

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who helped organize, participated in, and identified observations from the 6th annual City Nature Challenge! Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we had over 10,000 more people participate compared to last year, and for the first time ever, we made over one million observations in the four days of the challenge!

Here are the collective results:
Observations: 1,270,767
Species: 45,300+, including more than 2,100 rare/endangered/threatened species
Observers: 52,777

Most-observed species globally: Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

Since you can't click the links in the infographic, here are some of the interesting observations from around the world:
Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus)
Lixus placidus weevil
Turkish Snail (Helix lucorum)
Witches’ Cauldron (Sarcosoma globosum)
Blainville’s Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma blainvillii)
Purplish-backed Jay (Cyanocorax beecheii)
Sargassumfish (Histrio histrio)
Southern Lion (Panthera leo ssp. melanochaita)
Common Giant Flying Squirrel (Petaurista philippensis)
Euglossa macrorhyncha bee
Adelpha zea butterfly
Short-clubbed Wasp Orchid (Chiloglottis reflexa)

The City Nature Challenge also contributed to the most observations uploaded in a week on iNaturalist again - and also gave iNaturalist the first two weeks ever with over one million observations uploaded!

Thanks everyone! Continue to help IDing those CNC observations - it takes awhile to get through them! We're looking forward to CNC 2022!

How did Geelong perform in the CNC 2021 Rankings?
Following are the rankings for a number of categories using different criteria.
Category Ranking (Total Number of Cities)
Overall Total Observations: 88 (419)
Total Observations with less than 100 observers: 13 (301)
% Research Grade Observations (> 500 obs): 11 (231)
Average number of Obs per observer (>20 observers): 36 (212)
Total Observations- Temperate Climate: 49 (222)
Total Observations – Oceanic Zone /Temperate: 12 (36)
No Observers participating: 144 (419)
Total No of Species found: 53 (419)
Total Research Grade Species 28 (419)
Total Observations – Australian Locations 3 (17)

Note: Observations means total verifiable observations for all cities and therefore does not include causal observations.

Overall good performance from Geelong in a strong field of contenders. Thanks very much to all observers and identifiers for their valuable contributions.

Hi All,
After a successful CNC, I invite participants to share their story about their experience and learnings from the CNC. You can either do that by replying to this post below. Alternatively send me your comments or if you wish I can grant you edit authority to the project and you can add your own directly.

Last night at the Geelong Field Naturalist Club Plant Group meeting, Susan Kruss, (Brisbane Ranges) and Marilyn Hewish (Long Forest) spoke about their plant observations at their favourite locations. Lorraine Phelan gave an overview of interesting plants observed during the bioblitz and mentioned some of the well-known to the area plants that we failed to find.
Will look to share details on the meeting when it becomes available.

Cheers Rod

We had a wonderful time over the four days of the City Nature Challenge, choosing different environments and exploring them to see what we could find. Geelong is ideally located close to a variety of beach and bushland places. We have a 4WD so we chose places perhaps a bit more difficult to access, and where others might not go, such as Kirk’s Point (coastal), Inverleigh Reserve (rough tracks) and Aeroplane Rd in the Brisbane Ranges (very steep). We found more species by driving and stopping to explore rather than by walking longer trails.

The first day we went to Bannockburn where we found the Flame Robin and Jacky Winter but were disappointed as the Acacia Paradoxa has been cleared (very few small birds) and the Sugar Gums are being harvested. It was dry and there wasn’t much understorey flora coming through. A long time-consuming walk netted just 36 species.

Next day Kirk’s Point had a wealth of birds and coastal flora, some shells and sea urchins. Then we went to the Western Treatment Plant which was closed last year. Birds were plentiful despite the migratory ones having left, and there were some interesting coastal plants. Bird highlights were Brolgas, Blue-winged Parrots and Red-necked Avocets.

The Brisbane Ranges had some birds and a lot of plants. Many are not flowering so it is harder to identify them at this time of year (many thanks to the people who identified them for us). There wasn’t much fungi yet. Flowering plants included Epacris impressa, Early Wattle, Golden Grevillea, Shiny Cassinia and Cranberry Heath. Some Nodding Greenhood leaves have started to come up.

Inverleigh had lots of flora, again mostly leaves with some nice orchids coming up. We are looking forward to returning there in a few weeks time. To end the nature challenge I took our six-year old grandson to Balyang after school on the Monday. He is an excellent finder of insects and snails but he couldn’t find much. There are relatively tame birds to photograph, some water plants and a few insect cases.

We have enjoyed sorting our photos and seeing the discussions on iNaturalist, including tips on what we need to photograph for identification (different for almost every species)!

Susan Kruss

Thanks Susan for sharing. Rod