Diario de gcwarbler

Due to a confluence of external circumstances, I will be limited in my perambulations for this year's City Nature Challenge. That said, I live in a hot spot of urban biodiversity, so my intention is to thoroughly document the fauna and flora of Salton Drive over the period of April 26-29 with every tool at my disposal. I recently (4/24/24, 6 a.m.) did a "trial run" on my moth sheet with a new 395nm blacklight on the back porch and managed to document about 100 species of insects and other invertebrates in about a half hour. The Salton Drive Biodiversity project currently stands at 1,995 species so with some effort and a little luck, I hope to push that up over the 2,000 species threshhold. I'm going to set some modest diversity goals just to prod myself to keep at it:

Mammals: 8 species
Birds (difficult with my equipment): 10 species
Moths: 100 species
Other Insects: 100 species
Other Invertebrates: 25 species
Plants and Fungi: 100 species

I have done much gardening (transplanting, seeding) of native plants in the yard, but for the record, I will only be documenting species and individuals which are native to the lot or have spread of their own accord from my original plantings. Thus species like Crucita (Siam Weed), Plateau Goldeneye (Viguiera dentata), Turk's Cap (Malvaviscus arborea var. drummondii), and Frostweed (Verbesina virginica) in our butterfly garden were originally planted but these have subsequently spread widely elsewhere on the lot.

I'll be doing some blacklighting each night (weather permitting), sweep netting, and dip-netting in the creek. I'll also be trying to use Merlin to record and identify bird sounds and will try to capture images of a few bird species visiting a feeder outside my office window and with my long-standing trail camera which is pointed at the bird bath. Just to be thorough, I'll probably prowl the recesses of my garage to document such commensal species as the silverfish eating all my old papers, etc.