The four days of the observation part of the City Nature Challenge 2019 are over. Now we are working on trying to identify as much as we can.
There are always more people who make observations than there are people doing identifications, but we will see how much we can get done in one week.
Thank you to everyone who made observations during the City Nature Challenge. New York City did very well, coming in 12th in the world. That is remarkable considering we were the highest-ranked city to be this far north, and therefore still very much in spring.
We also had the hardest-working observers, who averaged the most number of observations per person of any city in the top 12.
We made nearly 4000 more observations than we did during last years event, even though we actually had fewer observers than last year.
We found 146 species that had never previously been recorded anywhere on iNaturalist.
For the 14 cities that are in our size category, we were #1 in terms of number of observations and number of species, ahead of Bristol and Bath City Region, Liverpool City region, Calgary and Barcelona.
So thanks again to everyone!
Several people got into the swing of using iNaturalist over the last few weeks within our beautiful park as it moves into full spring/late spring. The park looks absolutely gorgeous... and that is because it is absolutely gorgeous!
I hope everyone is enjoying using iNaturalist (iNat). If you have any questions, always feel free to ask me. On any observation page you can just write in a comment @susanhewitt, and I should automatically be notified. Or, if you know my regular email address, please go ahead and email me.
In recent weeks in our lovely park, there were two early morning sightings of an extremely small, mild, well-behaved and totally harmless native species, DeKay's Brownsnake. The entire park staff should be proud to know that Carl Schurz Park serves as home to this species, because it is an indicator of really excellent habitat quality! Very few Manhattan parks have this species; it has not been recorded so far in Central Park. This cute little reptile eats slugs and snails, and therefore is the gardener's friend.
Here is a picture of a nice one from Illinois:
