City Nature Challenge 2021: Post mission

Wow-wee wow wow! Man this year's City Nature Challenge was a very wet and wild one. I had a lot of fun tracking down those critters and plants and fungi. I wound up with a lot 1,300 + observations. I had to take it a bit easy since my feet got so wet and began to hurt and started to do some weird stuff after being waterlogged. I have to say it was worth it. I had not had waterlogged shoes for a long period of time since I worked at Six Flags when we had that bad flooding at Johnson's Creek. Still the observations were very good. I was able to find some very cool things this year. I did visit a lot of places but one thing I did that helped me boost my time was I took small steps and gave myself more time to look around. It was a very good one I am so glad I got to see @lulubelle @sambiology @brentano @wildcarrot and many of the others. Mothing the first night was not so great but it gave me an interesting idea that even in the rain you can still have some good stuff but you have to plan ahead and make sure the area you are in is in your favor.

I did some more mothing in my yard and checked the native plant garden and got all sorts of wild things. I have racked up a lot of hours for this year's City Nature Challenge for my volunteerism. We were able to get in our hours for the initial outings and even for our logging time when actively putting them on the iNaturalist. I have the log printed and ready to convert since I was starting to get more headaches and migraines in recent years. I have had to limit how many screens I look at so that is why it so hard for me to write these notes after an adventure.

So yeah I totally blew my old record out of the water like when you hit that B-4 and sink the battleship. Yep that is how it happened. I kind of sold myself short on some of my first notes as I went on. I had no idea I had as many species as I did. I was able to get so many cool things. I got that very cool Eyed-Click Beetle and was able to get two more warblers (Nashville and Black-throated Green) I was also able to get a Turkey and a Dickcissel. The Turkey is nothing new but I did see it at a place I was not expecting them to be. I was able to get so many new lifers and so many cool things. I was able to get out to Richardson which is a place I have been going out in the last two years. I am discovering some new parks and some have become normal haunts for me. If I have an nice weekend or an afternoon with my family we will take a trek to some of these areas. I am totally blown away at some of the totals some of us got.

Snowstorm Uri was a big whopper of a storm and doing this stuff during a big weather event for spring made it even more interesting. Normally I don't get out in the rain but there are times when I forget just how many rewards you can reap when you are out in the rain. I was able to get two slugs this time which I always have a hard time tracking down. Still rain didn't slow many of us down. I have heard that many of us were not as stoked for this one as in years past. That was kind of the same way for me at times. I was pumped but I had to get the gears grinding to fully answer the challenge. I guess it was the thought of still having to limit public events and not having everyone to full capacity was kind of the kicker. Too the weather could also bring some dents to the contest. Over all I would say this was one of the most important ones we have ever done. I mean we just had a big snow storm hit Texas over the course of February and we had lost a lot of wildlife and what not. Going out and doing this really helped me see this CNC in a total different light.

Still lots of good stuff to be found and lot of cool things to see and new places explored. I didn't have a big training time like I normally would take for the School finals were not exactly in my favor. I passed them with flying colors but they didn't work well with my training time since I had to schedule a couple of sessions in the Studio before and after but in the end it did pan out. I was very happy that I was able to do it again and you can bet I will be grinding the gears next year too. I will be doing these as long as they keep dishing them out (unless I am really sick) I hope that is never the case. I love this contest way too much. This is one of the times where I boost my lists and boost my knowledge and get to spend a lot of time soaking up the rays and just having a grand adventure. INaturalist has taught me a lot about myself and a lot about nature. I am very happy to have had an encouraging push to try this site. It has been a while since I had that push and began using it but I am very glad that I have stuck it out and kept going with it. The CNC has just become part of my yearly routine.

I was able to get far more than I had expected making my species list jump quite a bit too. I am almost to 15,000 observations. I am trying to get more observations but will all this continuing rain and not just light rain but massive downpour I have had to look for breaks to go out and photograph which is kind of hard at times to predict. Still I am glad to have done this one. Next year I am going to push myself even harder to get more observations. Each year I try and do more and more and I have always climbed up the ladder. So we shall see what next year's brings and what else the year has in store for me.

Until next time I will see you on the trail.

הועלה ב-מאי 18, 2021 07:09 לפנה"צ על ידי galactic_bug_man