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Hey everyone!

The City Nature Challenge is back again this year from April 24-27! While COVID-19 has put a dampener on our plans, the main CNC organizers, as well as many other cities, are going ahead with the CNC but in a very limited way. This time around we don't have any group activities like guided walks and bioblitzes and are instead encouraging individuals or small family units to go out on their own and make observations in their own houses, backyards, neighborhoods and where/when it is safe to do so, parks and woodlands (while using masks and maintaining proper social distancing guidelines, of course). The CNC is also not being pitched as a competition this year, but rather as a collaborative effort where cities around the world work together to document biodiversity in urban areas.

Like last year, the challenge area is the county of Philadelphia plus all counties that directly share a border with Philadelphia. This includes Montgomery, Bucks and Delaware counties in PA and Camden, Gloucester and Burlington counties in NJ. During the competition last year, the Greater Philadelphia Area did pretty well coming in the low 20s for both observations and species but what we did really well in was the number of people participating (thanks to all of you!) coming in 16th place, and beating NYC with over 500 people making at least one observation.

I'm tagging you here because you are one of the top observers in our region (either all time or recently) and we would love to have your help in making even more observations during this 4 day period next weekend. And to make sure we get as many species as possible, I've made a simple website that shows you all the species that have been reported in our region during April and May, but not yet seen during the CNC: http://targets.cncphilly.org/. The species are organized in descending order of how many observations have been made for that species. As people make observations, they will fall of that list every 30 minutes or so.

We would also love your help in spreading the word about the CNC among your family and friends. You can also tag them in the comments here.

Here are some useful links with more info:
Philly CNC website: https://cncphilly.org/
Philly CNC iNat project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020-greater-philadelphia-area
Main CNC website: http://citynaturechallenge.org/
Last year's results: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2019

Thanks for documenting the biodiversity of our region and we hope you'll help us during the CNC as well.

@josephthebirder @keimwj @johnnysap @brennafarrell @danefroymson @robizzy @zroskoph @prolleston @annebekker @brittany101 @joedurrance @nmacelko2 @conboy @augien @kmv @clearwing_moth @jenovak @mikehannisian @bobby23 @srall @michaelpirrello @gracejeschke @milkweedhunter @michaelmorris @kdstutzman @sgreene13 @robm2 @sandykeller @jason310 @jonibaum @stretchwell @brianwhite @colinpurrington @bugsandbirds @jstippick @newlingristmill @bmac922 @katesnowbird @kristym @go2nature @mycofreak @godshallcs @maricel-patino @darthlobster @cliffh @mark_fallon @choess @vaskointeractv @tanyadapkey @sgalen @linda142 @yan_tonz @timothymswartz @khenderson @krisalis @tonycrow @seahound @katedillard @cathybru @sammakler @bborgmannwinter @javiehweg @variegata @jawnattenborough @phillyphantailphan @jason310

We have only 6 hours to go for the start of the Philadelphia City Nature Challenge! Are you excited? We sure are! There's a lot of wildlife you can find in the Philadelphia region and we want you to find it all (with proper social distancing, of course)! Here's a link to a target list of species you can find in the next 4 days ordered by how common they are.

http://targets.cncphilly.org/

This includes all species that have been seen in the area in the months of April and May. You can also filter by certain 'iconic taxa' (iNat's terminology, not mine). So if birds are your thing, you can filter by that. Prefer plants instead? Or fungi, or insects, or arachnids? You can filter by all those too.

As people find the target species and upload them to iNat, it will drop off of the targets list. There will be a bit of a delay since iNat servers get pretty busy during the CNC and we store the target species list for a bit to avoid taxing their servers even more. The top ones are fairly easy to find, but as the challenge goes on, it will be harder to find some of them. You can also click around to see what NYC or DC have seen already that we haven't yet (it'll become more useful once the CNC starts). How far down the target species list can we get?

Good luck everybody! Happy hunting!

Thanks to everyone who went out in the rain and gloomy weather yesterday. We're doing pretty well in terms of the number of observations. 9th place worldwide among the cities using iNaturalist! That's pretty impressive, Philly. But it's not over yet. Can we hope to double our totals today with the better weather? Montgomery and Philadelphia counties are doing well, and Delaware and Burlington aren't too bad either. But I want the other counties to join in on the fun today. I'm looking at you, Bucks! But make sure you stay safe and take all social distancing precautions.

Here's hoping for an even more impressive day! And don't forget that to knock off those target species: http://targets.cncphilly.org/

Well done, Greater Philadelphia Area! I asked if you could double Friday's observations on Saturday and you answered and you answered big. Not only did you double it, but you also blew right past it. Thanks to everyone's efforts, we vaulted ahead to 5th place worldwide in observations. I know it's not a competition this year, but I can't help but be proud of what you've achieved. It's the only sunny day in the forecast during the CNC and you came to play, racking up over 8000 observations just yesterday alone. I know the forecast is not ideal today, but can we keep the momentum going?

After the high of Saturday, racking up over 8000 observations with over 500 people contributing at least one observation, the incessant rain yesterday meant we didn't do so well. We barely crossed 2000 observations and only 181 people participated, making yesterday our worst day in the CNC. This allowed Dallas to make up a 1000 observation deficit and pull into 5th place, and they currently hold a 2k observation edge over us. Can't blame you though. The weather was not nice at all. Wet and chilly weather isn't good iNatting weather - neither my phone or my camera can handle that well.

This is our last day of the 2020 CNC's observation phase. New Zealand have less than an hour left, we have a bit more. The weather is not ideal again, it's cold and damp out, but hopefully not as bad as yesterday with non-stop rain. I'm hoping we can rack up those huge numbers again today. Another 8000 observation day will put us in good stead to pull back that 5th place spot (maybe even higher?). Good luck out there today, everybody!

We have less than 3 hours to go! Make sure you make your last-minute observations soon. Any moths visiting your porch lights tonight? That spider in your basement? Perhaps, mold on some old bread? They all count. This is your last chance to observe them, but you have until May 3rd to upload all of your photos. Good luck!

A big thank you to everyone who went out and made observations these past 4 days. That was a whole lot of fun. The weather was less than ideal but that didn't stop you. We currently sit at 6th place in observations, 13th in species and 11th in observers. And I'll be watching that closely as more people upload observations over the next few days. If you know anyone who loves taking pictures of wildlife and was out taking pictures these past 4 days, I would urge you to consider asking them to add their photos to iNaturalist so that we can get our observer numbers up as well as have them be a part of the iNaturalist network.

Once again, I want to thank our amazing partner organizations for spreading the word and helping us organize this wonderful effort. I want to thank all the participants who went out there and took pictures and audio recordings. Despite the social isolation it has been fun getting to know every one of you through your observations. I'm truly happy and proud to be a part of this wonderful Philly naturalist community.

Also, I want to give a special shout-out to @srall for joining the Philadelphia effort this year. Sara had the second most observations and the most species for NYC last year, and she currently is top of our table with nearly 1400 observations. Thank you so much, Sara. I also want to thank @conboy for crossing the 1000 observation barrier and for topping our species count. Thank you, Andrew! And rounding out the top 10, big thanks to @josephthebirder, @brittany101, @robizzy, @mycofreak, @that_hippie_chick, @jfries7448, @danefroymson, and @javiehweg. Thank you!

Now that the observation phase is over, it's time to move on to the Identification phase and we could totally use your help identifying the 20k odd observations that we have. It doesn't matter if you are not an expert, you can still help. And while you are identifying stuff, if you find something really cool, please post a link to the observation in the comments below.

First, there are a ton of observations without any identifications (identifications are best done on a screen larger than a cellphone). Help us narrow these down first. So for example, if you know that something is an insect, enter 'Insects' in the species field. But if you know, it's actually a beetle, you can enter 'Beetles' instead. If you know exactly what species it is, enter that. If not, Beetles is fine, and someone who is an expert in Beetles can search for it and figure out the species.
Unknown

Here are some more useful ID links:
Plants
Fungi
Arachnids
Insects

If you want to get more specific, for example:
Beetles
Bees

From the above two links, you can simply replace the text in the species field, with whatever your area of interest is, whether it's isopods or lichen.
Thank you!