City Nature Challenge 2024
Will try to update this later. For now just a list of what I did during the 2024 CNC:
Friday, 4/26
12:00AM-7:00AM
Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park
I got permission to blacklight here and arrived on Thursday night 10PM to set up my lights and "let them cook." I set up several lights in area A and also a couple other parts of the park. I walked several areas at night to snap pics of spiders and other critters and an occasional plant and then tried to get some birds but didn't wait too long before moving on to Crandon Park.
All of my observations from Baggs:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=25.685327082927163&nelng=-80.13462632239542&on=2024-04-26&place_id=any&subview=map&swlat=25.664054046864997&swlng=-80.17779915869913&user_id=joemdo
Blacklighting observations:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=2024-04-26&order=asc&order_by=observed_on&place_id=any&project_id=blacklighting-florida&user_id=joemdo
7:27AM-2:49PM
Crandon Park
Priorities included getting coastal plants, snorkeling and shelling on the beach
Saturday, 4/27
Big Cypress National Preserve
3:00AM-
Woke up late and didn't get my blacklight running until 3AM.
I went with two sheets in the first campground area, which has a working power outlet on the third hookup area. I used several extension cables to power two Entoquip Entolights. I set up another couple lights at the bathroom further down the road.
Sunday, 4/28
Everglades National Park
Monday, 4/29
Neighborhood and The Landing at MIA, then Miami Beach shelling and an unplanned stop along the Macarthur cause, checking the rocks... very cool and fruitful stop!
Comments
Joe!!!! Holy moly, man! You went all out this City Nature Challenge! Way to go, my friend! :)
Thanks Sam! I really wanted to break 1k species for the first time. Still not done posting so I'm hoping to get closer to 1.1 or 1.2k! There is a chance that I will be moving before next CNC so I really wanted to make this one count in case I am somewhere else next year. Hoping to stay in Miami but time will tell.
Joe! I'd argue that you've already reached that 1k goal!!!
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d1=2024-04-26&d2=2024-04-29&place_id=any&user_id=joemdo&verifiable=any
Some observations just can't get to a 'species level' so, you've got over 1k unique taxa. Way to go, man!!!
I too went out a bit this year for the City Nature Challenge -- the weather didn't cooperate with us too too much (I was hailed upon with tornado sirens in the distance!!!), but it was still such a blast. :)
You've inspired me to put together a little journal post on my CNC -- I'll post that sometime soonish.
Oh yeah, I meant that are ID'd to species though! Last year and the year before I had ~970 although as you know that number usually creeps up as things get ID'd.
Crazy to hear there were tornado sirens going off but glad to hear you were safe! We had to deal with persistently strong winds, which hampered the blacklighting and then there was the nearly full moon, too, although we all had to deal with that, am I right??
Looking forward to seeing your journal post! Not sure if you have ever done this but I recently realized adding a tag to what I think were my coolest observations is a good way to get a link to your own personal highlights. I went through my observations from the first two days and simply added the tag "11111." Still need to go through my other observations to pick more highlights.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&project_id=city-nature-challenge-2024-south-florida-cncsoflo&q=11111&user_id=joemdo
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