Το Ημερολόγιο του City Nature Challenge 2021: Greater Philadelphia Area

A big thank you to everyone who participated and helped make our third time a grand success. Philly's official numbers at cut-off were:
Observations: 19,637
Species: 2,219
Observers: 966

While not officially a competition this year, those numbers put us at 11th in observations, 12th in species, and 11th in observers out of 419 participating species. Well done, Philly!

And despite not being a competition, we take a little bit of pride in that we beat NYC in all 3 categories. Though DC smoked us this year with 43k observations, nearly 3k species and 1961 participants. We'll get them next year!

Globally, Cape Town was ridiculously phenomenal as usual leading in both observations (71k+) and species (4766) while San Francisco came in first in observers (2265). Across all cities participating, the global CNC had the following amazing numbers with over 1 million observations made in 4 days:

Observations: 1,270,767
Species: 45,300+, including more than 2,100 rare/endangered/threatened species
Observers: 52,777

Thanks to every one of the 966 people who added observations in the Greater Philadelphia Area. And to the 726 identifiers, thank you! A special shoutout to our top:

Observers: @srall , @conboy, @annebekker, @seahound, @ginsengandsoon, @that_hippie_chick, @danefroymson, @mevets, @brittany101
Species: @annebekker, @conboy, @ginsengandsoon, @danefroymson, @mevets, @that_hippie_chick, @seahound, @mark_fallon, @srall
Identifiers: @conboy, @srall, @brianwhite, @choess, @jenovak, @julietrav24, @damonorsetti, @celestes, @davidenrique, @igor_kuzmin

And an extra special shoutout to @srall for participating with both Philly and NYC this year and being second in both places! And to @annebekker for being the first person in our 3 year history to cross 400 species in our region during the CNC.

Here's a cool graphic made by the global CNC organizers highlighting the global competition. CNC 2021 Infographic

I'll try to make a similar one for our region soon, so please let me know if you found anything cool either while observing or IDing.

Well done and congratulations all!

We're in the final stretch! We had a blast, and we hope you did too. Make sure to upload and ID all your observations tonight. We technically have until 9 am tomorrow, but why wait until the last minute?

Philly currently has 18k+ observations, nearly 2k species (based on the number in the CNC umbrella project), and 949 observers. We know it's not a competition again this year, but we still have that competitive spirit. We're currently 13th place in both observations and species among cities using iNaturalist, and 11th in observers. Can we break into the top 10 in any of these categories at the last minute?

That was fun and exciting, and maybe a little exhausting, wasn't it? We had a great time documenting our biodiversity. There's so much wildlife in and around Philadelphia, and we thank you for helping us document it and holding our own against other cities around the world. We're almost at 17k observations, over 2k taxa (1870 ID'd all the way to species), and 945 observers. Can we get to 1000 observers and 2000 species?

@srall leads the Philadelphia observations total, and @conboy in species. Sara participated in both the NYC and Philadelphia CNCs. She's second in NYC and first in Philly. We've no idea how you manage to do this, Sara. We're very impressed and we thank you for joining us again this year. And Andrew, that's a really impressive species list. Well done!

While the observations phase might be done, it's time to ID all of the photos that we have in our project. And also upload any photos you still have.

To start IDing observations, from the project main page, click Observations and then Identify. Or go straight here. You can filter taxa by whatever you are good at IDing. Good at plants? Filter by Plants. Birds? Same thing. If you're not an expert at any particular taxon, no problem, help us ID all the 'unknown' observations. You don't need to ID them all to species. If an Unknown is a plant, you can apply the label plants and anyone who is looking at just plants will be able to find it and narrow it down further. Try to get as specific as you can though. If you think a plant is an oak, ID it as an oak.

Here are some links to help you get started IDing observationsthat are not ID'd to species yet:
Unknown observations
Plants
Fungi and lichen
Insects
Arachnids
Molluscs
Reptiles and Apmibians
Mammals
Birds

Happy identifying!

We're almost at the end of the first phase of the 2021 City Nature Challenge. Today is the last day to go out and take your photos and audio recordings. We've made over 11k observations, collectively seen 1600 + species, and have had 750 people taking part. We've seen some interesting birds, especially in the city of Philadelphia, like a Summer Tanager, a Red-headed Woodpecker, and best of all a Cerulean Warbler. The warm weather yesterday meant that a lot of insects were out and about too. Unfortunately, the rain is back today, so conditions are going to be a bit more challenging. I'm still holding out hope that we hit, and perhaps even exceed, last year's totals of 23k observations, 1900 species, and 850+ people participating. Here's to a wonderful last day of observations!

Find what species we still need at: http://targets.cncphilly.org/

The 2021 City Nature Challenge is here! We had 15 observations when I went to bed last night a little after midnight, and we're already seeing observations come in this morning. We're off to a great start. The weather might be a bit of a downer this evening, so stay safe and try to get all your observations in nice and early. And we're doing a #5onFri social media campaign, so make at least 5 observations on your lunch break and share them on social media with the #5onFri hashtag. Of course, we expect many of you to make more than 5 observations, but it's a fun way to get the word out and get a bunch of people trying out the City Nature Challenge for the first time.

Here's to a great 2021 and let's try to beat our totals from last year!