Diario del proyecto City Nature Challenge 2023: Greater Philadelphia Area

The City Nature Challenge (CNC) 2023 results are in! We had 15,054 observations of 2065 species made by 634 people. That puts us at 28th in observations, 29th in species, and 23rd in participants out of 482 cities worldwide.

We beat NYC in all categories, DC beat us in all categories, and Boston beat us in observations and participants, but we got the better of them in species.

Worldwide, La Paz, Bolivia swept all three categories with over 126k observations, 5344 species, and 3025 participants. In the US, Dallas/Fort Worth was number 1 in observations (48k), Houston-Galveston for species (3707), and San Francisco Bay Area for participants (2488).

As usual, congratulations to @srall for having the most observations in Philly despite the fact that she splits the 4 days between Philly and NYC. She's #1 here and #3 in NYC with well over 1k observations in both cities! She's also #8 worldwide for most observations. Sara also had the third most number of species in Philly. What an impressive effort!

Also congratulations to @mattparr for being the first person in Philly CNC history to cross 500 species. That's an impressive feat considering the weather we had this year. In addition to having the most species this year, Matt also had the second most observations with 1290 observations.

Congratulations also to @jameshoughton who had the 3rd highest ever species count in Philly CNC history with 451 species which puts him second on this year's species list. James also had the third most number of observations.

Well done to everyone else who contributed observations and IDs! The weather wasn't ideal, but you soldiered on and put up some impressive numbers on the board.

A big thank you once again to everyone who participated and helped spread the word. We couldn't do this without you. Mark your calendars for next year's CNC: April 27-30, 2024

PS: I'll try to organize some local iNat meetups over the summer, so please let me know in the comments if you'd like to be notified.

We have just a few hours left to upload our observations, so if you have anything left to add, now is your chance. Take a look at our Needs List and see if there's anything you might have seen or heard that we still need. Thanks again for participating everyone!

A big thank you to everyone for braving the weather and adding observations for us. These might be our lowest numbers in 5 years, but I still think we did an amazing job considering the weather we had.

Together, we found 1880 species over these 4 days. Can we get to 2k? We still have time until May 7th to upload any photos or recordings we took in the last 4 days, so if you have any photos of the species in my screenshots at the end of this post, please add them to iNat. You can see the full list at http://targets.cncphilly.org/.

Also, I would love to hear some of the exciting stuff you found over the last 4 days. And while you are helping ID some of the species others have seen, if you see any really neat species from other people, please let me know as well. I can send them to the worldwide CNC organizers who might feature them in the wrap-up infographic.

So far the most interesting thing I've seen is this American White Pelican flying over Germantown, Philly, but perhaps, the rarest thing that was seen in the area is a Red-footed Booby in Burlington County. Unfortunately, it was on private property, and the record is not on iNat yet, but maybe someone knows someone who can get that photo added to iNat. That would be an amazing CNC species since there are very few East Coast records of that species on iNat and none anywhere this far north.

And once again, thank you so much for participating and making this such a fun event!

Anyway, here are screenshots of our current targets list:

Finally no rain! We've had our worst weather of any CNC so far, but I finally see the sun after 3 days! We're far behind our goals and our previous years' totals. Can we make one final last-day push and get those numbers up and overtake Boston and NYC?

We still have so many species to find. Almost every species of butterfly, in fact. Any Paper Wasp or Yellowjacket too. Lots of jumping spiders are still on our needs list. And surprisingly even some easy-to-find plants.

Here's a sample of our current top needs list, but you can visit http://targets.cncphilly.org/ to see an auto-refreshing full list.

Let's go Philly!

We're now halfway through the 2023 City Nature Challenge. The weather hasn't been great and it shows in our numbers, unfortunately. We're far below our goal of 1k participants, and NYC, DC, and Boston are ahead of us in most, if not all, categories. Today looks like a bust weather-wise too, but we have some sunny weather forecast for the final day tomorrow, thankfully.

We still have a lot of fairly easy-to-find species on our needs list. You can see the full list at http://targets.cncphilly.org, but here's a snapshot of our top 50 needed species.

You can visit the site throughout the day today and tomorrow to see what we still need. It updates every 30 minutes and you can also filter by your area of interest.

How have everyone else's two days been so far? I'd love to hear about your experiences, any unexpected things you've found, what you're looking forward to, etc. I've found zero insects on the wing so far this CNC. Disappointing, but not unexpected. But I'm hoping to rectify that tomorrow. Happy iNatting, everyone! And let's go, Philly!

Let's go, Philly! We have some not-ideal weather over the next few days, but it takes more than bad weather to stop Philly, doesn't it? The insects might not be as plentiful, but the plants are still there and we have good opportunities for some fungi. Let's see what we can find today, shall we? Good luck and happy iNatting!