יומן של City Nature Challenge 2021: San Francisco Bay Area

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who helped organize, participated in, and identified observations from the 6th annual City Nature Challenge! Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we had over 10,000 more people participate compared to last year, and for the first time ever, we made over one million observations in the four days of the challenge!

Here are the collective results:
Observations: 1,270,767
Species: 45,300+, including more than 2,100 rare/endangered/threatened species
Observers: 52,777
Most-observed species globally: Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

Here in the Bay Area, our results were:
32,181 observations
2885 species
2265 observers

Although it wasn't a competition this year, we HAVE TO point out that (yet again) we had the most participants of any city! What an amazing community of nature-appreciating folks we have! An enormous THANK YOU to all of you! And a special shout-out to our top...
Observers: @lgottlieb, @gyrrlfalcon, @emilyearthquake, @sarah-mae, @barry_thomson, @marymchurchill, @leslie_flint, @graysquirrel, @julie_sf, @rebeccafay
Species-finders: @barry_thomson, @gyrrlfalcon, @lgottlieb, @leslie_flint, @catchang, @rebeccafay, @bluevalhalla, @mary-nguyen, @hilarystaples, @kevinhintsa
Identifiers: @catchang, @fa1conx, @hfb, @boschniakia, @gyrrlfalcon, @graysquirrel, @tiwane, @kevinhintsa, @kueda, @zaf2103

San Francisco Bay Area highlights:
This stunningly patterned Long-nose Snake
A stern gaze from this Great Horned Owl
The gorgeous and endangered Mount Burdell Jewelflower
A prowling Mountain Lion caught on a camera trap
Normally rare in the Bay Area, a plethora of Rose-pink Cuthona nudibranchs
A decaying endangered Fin Whale recently necropsied by the California Academy of Sciences and The Marine Mammal Center

Since you can't click the links in the infographic, here are some of the interesting observations from around the world:
Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus)
Lixus placidus weevil
Turkish Snail (Helix lucorum)
Witches’ Cauldron (Sarcosoma globosum)
Blainville’s Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma blainvillii)
Purplish-backed Jay (Cyanocorax beecheii)
Sargassumfish (Histrio histrio)
Southern Lion (Panthera leo ssp. melanochaita)
Common Giant Flying Squirrel (Petaurista philippensis)
Euglossa macrorhyncha bee
Adelpha zea butterfly
Short-clubbed Wasp Orchid (Chiloglottis reflexa)

The City Nature Challenge also contributed to the most observations uploaded in a week on iNaturalist again - and also gave iNaturalist the first two weeks ever with over one million observations uploaded!

Thanks everyone! Continue to help IDing those CNC observations - it takes awhile to get through them! We're looking forward to CNC 2022!

Great job, SF Bay Area! What an incredible four days of documenting our local biodiversity - hopefully you got to spend a little time outside, saw something that amazed you, or maybe even joined in an event - and feel slightly more connected to nature and our community because of it.

While the time for making observations is done, the City Nature Challenge is still not over! We now have until 9am on Monday, May 10 to do two things:

1. Get all the photos you made April 30 - May 3 turned into observations and uploaded; and
2. Work to get as many observations as we can down to species (or as close as we can get)!

In the same way that anyone can be an observer, anyone can help identify observations. In the SF Bay CNC project, click “Observations” and you’ll see an “Identify” button pop up just below it. Clicking this will take you to the iNaturalist Identify page and show you all of our observations that still need to be identified. From this page, you can restrict what it shows you by taxon, which helps if you know how to ID certain groups. You can also use the "Filters" dropdown to pick a specific place in the Bay Area to make IDs, like a particular county or even a particular park you might know well.

If you’re not an expert in any group, you can still help by identifying the “unknowns” - the observations with no IDs at all! Click the “Filters” button and then select the dashed-line leaf with a question mark in it:

This will show you all the observations that are currently listed as “unknown.” It’s really helpful to go through these and add high-level IDs like “plants” or “insects” or “birds” or “fungi” - whatever you know about the organism - so people who do know how to ID these groups down to species can find them! Here’s a short video about using the Identify page.

No matter what, please only add an ID of which you can be reasonably sure - it’s fine if you don’t know what something is, and it’s fine to only add a genus or family or even kingdom level ID.

To get you started, here are some groups of observations that still need IDs:
All the "unknown" observations that still need IDs
All the birds that still need IDs
All the reptiles & amphibians that still need IDs
All the mammals that still need IDs
All the insects & arachnids that still need IDs
All the fungi & lichens that still need IDs

Happy identifying! Results will be announced in the afternoon on Monday, May 10 - we'll be sure to add a journal update for them!

We're nearing the stroke of midnight, signaling the start of Friday, April 30 – and the start of the 6th annual City Nature Challenge! Though, technically, the City Nature Challenge will have actually started 19 hours earlier when it hit 12:00am in New Zealand - we're one of the last cities to start the City Nature Challenge, except for our two Hawaiian collaborators, Honolulu and Maui. Hopefully you've had the chance to check out the CNC 2021 umbrella project to see all the observations coming in from around the world!

Who will be the first in the Bay Area to make & upload an observation for CNC?! Anyone planning on staying up late to get some nocturnal species? Versus resting up and making sure you have lots of energy for a marathon observation day during daylight hours? :)

Regardless, we're so excited to see what everyone finds throughout the Bay Area over the next four days. Whether you're heading out on your own or participating in one of the many CNC events, we hope you enjoy spending a little time being outside, connecting to nature, and celebrating the incredible biodiversity of the Bay Area.

A huge THANK YOU in advance to everyone who makes observations, helps with IDs, gets the word out, and/or hosts an event for this year's CNC - it's this amazing community that makes the CNC what it is!

We'd love to see you at one of these events! Be sure to check the details: some of these events are virtual, many of these are in-person socially distant events and bioblitzes, while others lower down on the list are self-guided activities that you can do any time during the City Nature Challenge.

Be sure to check back here to see more events being held in the Bay Area for the 2021 City Nature Challenge! We will add them as they are confirmed.

Pre-CNC Events:

• April 22, 12-1PM | Virtual Event | Nature & Nosh: City Nature Challenge 2021 | Hosted by Sonoma County Regional Parks

• April 29, 12-1PM | Virtual Event | City Nature Challenge Launch with One Tam | Hosted by One Tam
• April 29, 2:30PM | Virtual Event | City Nature Challenge Kicks Off! | Hosted by Sonoma County Regional Parks on their Facebook page
• April 29, 7PM | Virtual Event | The City Nature Challenge: Intro to BioBlitz! | Hosted by San Mateo County Parks
• April 29, 7PM | Virtual Event | City Nature Challenge Kick Off | Hosted by Grassroots Ecology and Bioblitz.club

Friday, April 30:

• April 30, 8:30-10AM | Socially-distant event | Birding Walk at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• April 30, 11AM-1PM | Tabling | Butterfly Table at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park (near White Barn) | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• April 30, 1:30-3PM | Socially-distant event | Daily Butterfly Walk at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• April 30, 3-6PM | Socially-distant event | Introduction to iNaturalist hike at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center

Saturday, May 1:

• May 1, 8AM-12PM | Socially-distant Bioblitz | Pillar Point Tidepools Bioblitz | Hosted by the California Academy of Sciences
• May 1, 9-11AM | Socially-distant Bioblitz | Hellyer Park Bioblitz, San Jose | Hosted by Keep Coyote Creek Beautiful
• May 1, 9AM-12PM | Socially-distant event | Saddle Mountain Open Space Preserve Hike | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center & the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District
• May 1, 10AM-1PM | Socially-distant event | iNaturalist en Español at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• May 1, 11AM-1PM | Tabling | Butterfly Table at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park (near White Barn) | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• May 1, 1:30-3PM | Socially-distant event | Daily Butterfly Walk at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• May 1, 12-3PM | Socially-distant Event | Green Hairstreak Corridor Open House | Hosted by Nature in the City

Sunday, May 2:

• May 2, 9AM-5PM | Socially-distant event | All-day Plant Walk at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• May 2, 10AM-12:30PM | Socially-distant event | Community Hike at Little Uvas Creek Open Space Preserve | Hosted by Saved by Nature
• May 2, 10AM-1PM | Socially-distant event | Observing Where You Are at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• May 2, 11AM-1PM | Tabling | Butterfly Table at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park (near White Barn) | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• May 2, 12-3PM | Socially-distant event | Twin Peaks Bioregion Walk and Bioblitz | Hosted by Nature in the City
• May 2, 1:30-3PM | Socially-distant event | Daily Butterfly Walk at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center

Monday, May 3:

• May 3, 9AM-12PM | Socially-distant event | Slow Hike & Making iNaturalist Observations at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• May 3, 11AM-1PM | Tabling | Butterfly Table at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park (near White Barn) | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• May 3, 1:30-3PM | Socially-distant event | Daily Butterfly Walk at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center
• May 3, 7:30-9PM | Socially-distant event | Evening Animal Sounds at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park | Hosted by the Sonoma Ecology Center

Multi-Day Self-Guided Events:

• April 30 - May 1 | Self-directed Bioblitz | Hilltop Hulabaloo in San Francisco | Hosted by the Yerba Buena Chapter of CNPS
• April 30 - May 3 | Self-directed event | Bay Area Backyard & Neighborhood Bingo | Hosted by the California Academy of Sciences
• April 30 - May 3 | Self-directed Bioblitz | San Mateo County Parks Bioblitz | Hosted by San Mateo County Parks | Also join their introductory webinar on April 29
• April 30 - May 3 | Self-directed Bioblitz | Mount Tam Self-guided Bioblitz (join the project to participate!) | Hosted by One Tam
• April 30 - May 3 | Self-directed Bioblitz | Point Molate/San Pablo Bioblitz | Hosted by Wholly H2O with Point Molate Alliance, Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor | Also join their ID session on May 4
• April 30 - May 3 | Self-directed Bioblitz | Albany Bulb Bioblitz | Hosted by Wholly H2O with the City of Albany, Alldogs, Love the Bulb | Also join their ID session on May 5
• April 30 - May 3 | Self-directed Bioblitz | Berkeley Marina Bioblitz | Hosted by Wholly H2O with ISMC, Chavez Park Conservancy | Also join their ID session on May 6

Post-CNC Identification Parties:

• May 4, 7PM | Virtual Identification Party | Point Molate ID Session | Hosted by Wholly H2O
• May 5, 7PM | Virtual Identification Party | Albany Bulb ID Session | Hosted by Wholly H2O
• May 6, 7PM | Virtual Identification Party | Berkeley Marina ID Session | Hosted by Wholly H2O