Macaulay Summer of Nature 2021's Journal

Great job making observations all summer, Macaulay Team! Together we made 503 observations of 253 species. Our top observed groups are plants (44%), insects (22%), and birds (14%). Thanks to everyone who made observations all summer: @lisabrundage, @klodonnell, @sasha11, @emilyrice, @kov, @josephugoretz, and @clow!

Here's our final leaderboard:

Congrats to our top observer @lisabrundage and our top species finder @klodonnell.

As a team, we made observations in the east and west of the US:

And finally, our rankings for the August Challenge (NYS top species scavenger hunt) were:
@klodonnell (10/25)
@lisabrundage (6/25)
@emilyrice (4/25)

It's time for our final Summer of Nature Challenge! But first, the July results...

Congrats to @lisabrundage for sweeping all categories! She posted the most observations and found the most species in July AND she won the July mini-challenge with 4 moth observations! @sasha11 and @clow also posted Lepidopteran observations! Great job everyone!

For the month of August, we're going to do a common species scavenger hunt. Last year, we did the most commonly observed North American species. This year, we're looking for the top 25 most observed species in New York State. These are nearly all widely-distributed species in the US, so even if you're not in NY right now, you should still be able to find most of them. You'll have until August 31 to find them all. We'll also announce our top observers over the whole summer and our top species finders.

Here are the top 25 species. I recommend printing this out so you can check them off! Happy observing!

This year will be the 10th year of National Moth Week, so July's challenge will be to find butterflies and moths all month! We'll announce who has the most lepidopteran observations for the whole month AND who finds the most moths specifically during Moth Week (July 17-25).

There will be public events all over during NMW. To find some in your area, visit this map and click on the green markers.

Happy Observing!

Hey Macaulay Team!

June 21 - June 27 is Pollinator Week so for this month's mini challenge we'll be looking for pollinators! From now until June 27, see how many observations you can make of insects interacting with flowers. We'll accept any observations with an insect (or other animal pollinator) and a flower in them. This might end up including things that aren't actually involved in pollination, but we'll still accept them.

The NYC Pollinator Working Group is hosting a bunch of events this week and many of them feature friends of the BioBlitz and City Nature Challenge. You'll definitely be able to find pollinators if you join some of these. See their event list here.

NYC Parks is also hosting events. Check out there list here.

Results announced June 28 in the comments below and on our Slack. Remember that you can also still keep many ANY observations to be the June top observer and/or species finder! Good luck!

Hey folks! Let's show off the nature around us wherever we are this summer! All through June, July, and August, make iNaturalist observations and have them count towards this project. How many different species can we find? How far can we expand our map? What will be the most observed species? Let's find out!

Here's how to participate:

1 - Join the project (the Join button is in the project banner on the app and in the browser).
2 - Make observations wherever you are June 1, 2021 through August 31, 2021.

That's it! It's easy! The project will automatically collect all of your observations once you join. Please try to keep your observations to wild individuals (no pets, potted plants, landscaped plants, zoo animals, etc.), but if you do post those, be sure to mark them as "captive/cultivated."

I'll announce who our top observers and species finders are each month and we'll also have some mini challenges that I'll post about here. The first mini challenge will coincided with Pollinator Week later this month. You'll get updates about new posts in the Activity section of the app or via email (if you enabled that function in iNaturalist).

Don't forget that you can also observe close to (or inside) your home! Visit this page from the 2020 City Nature Challenge: NYC project: Stay at Home Scavenger Hunt.

Happy Observing!
Kelly