Diario del proyecto City Nature Challenge 2021: Greater Portland-Vancouver Metro Area

Hi City Nature Challenge Identifiers,

I (Adrienne) am online identifying observations until 10pm tonight.
Message me (@adrienne_stclair) for a link to a Google meet if you have any questions or want to say hello!

Hello City Nature Challenge participants,

What an incredible turnout!
We had 455 people collect 5,476 observations of 932 species. This is a fantastic achievement for our first year of participation. Thank you so much for your part.

Now it's time to identify those observations.
To start identifying photos, visit our region’s project page (City Nature Challenge - Greater Portland-Vancouver Metro Area), click “Observations” and then “Identify” just below it. Here, you can restrict what it shows you by taxon, if you know how to ID certain groups.

What if I’m not an expert?
We still need your help identifying! If you’re not an expert in any group, you can help by identifying the “unknowns” – the observations with no IDs at all! Click the “Filters” button and then select the dashed-line leaf with a question mark in it:

Here's some observations that need your help!
These reptiles couldn’t slither away from us this weekend: CNC/PDX 2021 Reptiles

Brainy for birds? We have 36 observations that need help with identification: CNC/PDX 2021 Birds

Skilled at scat? Check this out: What's that scat?

Are you a sucker for Saxifrage? Help us identify this observation: What saxifrage has such unique bracts?

Thanks again, your enthusiasm is the kind of contagious we need these days.

What a fantastic turnout, THANK YOU, EVERYONE!

Let's get to identifying those observations.

I'll be online this evening from 7:30-9:30pm. JOIN ME!
message @adrienne_stclair for the google meeting link.

Thanks for helping us identify our observations!

City Nature Challenge PDX organizers will host an open Google Meeting to be online together and identify observations or just hang out.

To join, simply message @adrienne_stclair for the link!

happy collecting!

Across the world, where the time has passed midnight, the observations are starting to roll in. As I write this 9,141 observations have already been collected!

Join in the collecting. Let's see how many observations we can collect and how many people participate!
Help us by:

• Making observations
• Identifying those observations (check out a helpful video here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials#identify)

If you have an interesting observation, please send the organizers a message so we can share it with the group.

See you on iNaturalist!

We can be found along with 413 other cities across the globe. Check them all out here!
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021

Participation is easy!
To collect observations for the project, simply collect an observation in iNaturalist within our project boundary (see map for details) and between the dates of April 30th at 12:00 am and May 3, 11:59 pm. Your observation will automatically be added to the project!

If you would are:
If you are:
✓ A naturalist interested in helping people identify observations
✓ An educator that would like to participate with students
✓ An enthusiast interested in helping to organize
✓ Anyone who would like more information
Please let us know by filling out this Google Form: https://forms.gle/qhbtDtXfmZLW97gb7

To help us correctly identify as many species as possible, log on between April 30 and May 9 and identify the observations. Come to this project page and there will be a link to the observations that were collected.

And lastly, for project updates, follow this project on iNaturalist. We will let you know things like:

• how to sign up for a naturalist-led walk in a public park (COVID restrictions allowing)
• how to join an identification party online to chat about your taxa of interest
• our final tallies of observations and species collected

Let's see how many observations we can make in our first-ever challenge!

The City Nature Challenge is being organized by a team of people representing both agencies and the public.

Working together are:
Four-county Weed Management Area
The Intertwine Alliance
Johnson Creek Watershed Council
Leach Botanic Garden
National Parks Service
Northwest Ecological Research Institute
Portland Ecologists Unite
Portland Parks and Recreation
Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District

Join our community of naturalists!
Reach out to us here: https://forms.gle/uxTpAzWFcDNUTdLY8

The City Nature Challenge started as a friendly competition between naturalists in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They wanted to see which city could collect the most observations in a short period of time. That year more than 1000 people participated and collected over 20,000 observations. Soon, the idea grew, and each year more and more people across the globe attend. In 2020 there were 244 cities across the globe that participated and collected 815,258 observations!

This year is the first time that the Portland Metropolitan Area has participated. Though it's a trying year for engaging with each other, there is no better time to get outside and observe the natural world.

We will populate this website with helpful hints and ideas for participating. In the meantime, sign up as part of the project and you'll get our updates and join our region's naturalists for this event.

great to have you here,
City Nature Challenge PDX Organizers