On the iNaturalist global leaderboards for December 2019

December in the more northerly parts of the Northern Hemisphere is usually not a great month for nature observations. However, starting on the 4th of December I was lucky enough to spend almost three weeks in Southwestern Florida -- Sanibel, which is a barrier island on the Gulf Coast, not far from Fort Myers.

Of course I love to try to find new-to-me, or better yet new-to-Sanibel species of shelled marine mollusk, and I like to look at all the other marine organisms that wash up on the beaches. Sanibel beaches are fortunately not "groomed"!

I also love to try to see new-to-me species of plants, and even new plant pests and plant diseases. I was lucky that I was able to get to a nature preserve on a very hot day, and get some pics of some interesting flying insects.

We had a lot of rain storms towards the end of our visit, which was not good for trying to examine the more tiny shells, or trying to see more flying insects. However, despite this, I found I was already on the global leaderboards for the month of December 2019, both for the total number of observations made, and for number of different species observed.

And when I came back to NYC, late on 23rd December, I knew if we got some reasonable weather (as was predicted) I could probably easily rack up a couple hundred more species here in the Big Apple, winter or not.

So that's what I did, and I finished the month still well positioned on December's leaderboards, with 3,027 observations of 587 species. I also was able to have fun with two iNat mini-meetups, one on Sanibel and one here in NYC, thanks to @jayhorn and @steven-cyclist!

Happy New Year to everyone! And happy iNatting!

הועלה ב-ינואר 1, 2020 10:06 אחה"צ על ידי susanhewitt