Projektin City Nature Challenge 2023: Winnipeg Region, MB, Canada Päiväkirja

As the temperature begins to plummet, preparations begin for the 2024 City Nature Challenge next spring.

The 2024 Winnipeg Region project is up and ready. Joining the project will give you the opportunity to get notifications when the project journal is updated. If you don't like notifications, then just bookmark it in your web browser for future reference.

You may notice that the Winnipeg Region boundaries are a little larger for 2024 - this is to allow all of Oak Hammock Marsh WMA to be inside the challenge area instead of just the southern part. Bird observations are a big part of the April iNaturalist experience in Manitoba and Oak Hammock is a great place to see them.

The Canadian Wildlife Federation helps coordinate the event on the national level. The umbrella project for all the Canadian participants is also ready. You will see the list of participating cities grow steadily over the next few months as they make their projects. If you happen to be out of town during the challenge, you may want to see if where you are travelling has any events planned. :)

If you have any suggestions, beefs or bouquets that you would prefer to remain just between us, you can send them to marykrieger using the iNaturalist messaging system - that little envelope in the top right of the screen.

Happy observing
Mary Krieger
St Andrews Manitoba

This marks three years in a row we've made more than one million observations in four days. No matter whether you made one or many observations you can take pride in that accomplishment. Next year’s City Nature Challenge: April 27-30, 2024 – put it on your calendar!

The official results are built from a snapshot of all the data collected in iNaturalist as of May 8th 9am local time for each project. As time goes on, more observations collected within the study period may be added and new identifications made. This will change the stats you see when you look at any of the projects - this is a good thing .

Here are the collective results:

Observations: 1,870,763
Species: 57,227+, including more than 2,570 rare/endangered/threatened species
Observers: 66,394
Most-observed species globally: Mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos)

And congratulations to our “top” cities:

That was a pretty windy four days. Bird migration was a much bigger presence in this years local event - I think we caught the beginning of the waterfowl movement together with the earliest of the perching birds. Active insects were much harder to find. The day after the observation period ended we found a tiger beetle emergence event which would have been great to see in the observations - well we will know what to look for next year.

Over 1.6 million observations worldwide collected in this years event and during the CNC, iNaturalist hit 10 million observations in Canada!

Two more days to upload observations and contribute identifications for them to be included in the official counts. I will post the results in the journal once I have them.

Thanks to you all!

Our group had an enjoyable time looking for wild things in and around Selkirk - Little Lake Park was particularly productive. Got a few more of our Friday uploaded included the Short eared owl!

Hope Monday is good to you. Remember that the event includes Monday until midnight.

When we got back to the house yesterday we found the backyard pond annual wood frog get-together in full swing. A lot of calling and some splashing shenanigans but relatively calm compared to last years knock down drag out brawl.

Our group saw some Mourning Cloaks - one of the local butterflies that overwinters as an adult. Keep an eye out in sunny sheltered spots for the other two as well - Compton Tortoiseshell and Milbert's Tortoiseshell.

Happy discoveries

Our little group had a great day at Oak Hammock yesterday - lots of first of the year ducks as well as a Marbled Godwit and a Killdeer to top it off. Not everything we saw is uploaded yet - welcome my dears to the joys of back log. As our little group uses mainly cameras rather than phones - there is a little extra fiddling about before everything makes it up to iNaturalist - and while the event is still on, sleep and gathering more observations tend to get prioritized over uploading.

Today we will be mucking around in Birds Hill Park here and there. I will be waiting for any of you who would like to drop by and meet face to face at 2pm in the small parking lot at the east end of South Drive. Its on the north side of the road just before South Drive turns north towards its end at Festival Drive.

Friday overall for the challenge was a great start - nearly 400.000 observations of 27000+ species gathered worldwide by nearly 25,000 observers. Canada's share of this is atm nearly 15,000 observations of 2,100+ species by 1,300+ observers.

Here in Manitoba both the Winnipeg and Brandon project have found lots of interesting things - and yes that include those heralds of Manitoba spring - the red-winged blackbird and the Manitoba crocus.

Here's a link to the Brandon project if you would like to see how they are getting on...
https://inaturalist.ca/projects/brandon-city-nature-challenge-2023

Have a lovely Saturday!

Thanks to our early morning crew - @seraphinpoudrier and @rrcalica we are off to a great start - 20 observations of 19 species.

Checking the Canada wide collections project this means we are tied for third place with the greater Ottawa area and Windsor Ontario at 7:30 am! Here's the link to the Canada wide collections project so you can see for yourself - if you look quick.

https://inaturalist.ca/projects/city-nature-challenge-canada-2023-defi-nature-urbaine

See you out there!

Many places to the east of us are already gathering observations...Check out the global project to see the global activity https://inaturalist.ca/projects/city-nature-challenge-2023

I wish you all the most lovely discoveries during the next few days!

The fun returns! Whether you are a veteran of all the previous City Nature Challenges or are not sure what the fuss is about, I hope that you will choose to join in this year; as an observer, identifier or both! At the time of this post, we have 82 days to get ready :)

The challenge is simple - any time between one second after midnight on April 28 to midnight May 1 find an organism living in the wild anyplace within the 'Winnipeg region' boundaries. Take a picture of it. Upload the picture to the iNaturalist database together with where and when you found it... and then repeat with as many different wild organisms as you can find.

Identify your observation to the best of your ability when you upload it. If you know exactly what it is, go ahead and choose that. If you are somewhat unsure, you can choose a more general identification like plants or birds. It is perfectly okay to start with a loose ID at first and then later after consulting with references, choose a more specific one. Some organisms are just tough to figure out at first glance.

You can also participate in identifying organisms observed by others. Contribute identifications where you feel most confident about your knowledge. The computer suggestions can be helpful - but they are not magic. You will still need to compare your organism with the pictures of the suggested one, and check that background info on that species to see if it is a reasonable suggestion. May 2 to May 7 is set aside to concentrate on identifying the event observations - but really there is no time limit.

This year, I invite you to spend at least some of your time on Saturday, April 29th in Birds Hill Provincial Park, documenting the organisms living there. Right now there is no specific timetable. I 'll let you know here in the blog, if that changes.

Looking forward to seeing what we find this year.