City Nature Challenge, Part 5 -- 2017 Results

As I mentioned in my first post about the 2017 City Nature Challenge, the City Challenge was originally conceived by some folks in California to encourage people to get out and observe nature.  It also seemed to be a way to promote iNaturalist.org.  It started as a competition between only Los Angeles and San Francisco last year, but expanded to 16 cities this year.

Last year's results, according to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County website:: 

Last year over 20,000 observations were logged by over 1,000 citizen scientists, representing 1698 species in the Bay Area, and 1679 species in L.A. County!


This years results.  I suspect a lot of people were like us, we did not really think of this as a competition (except, of course, we had to make sure and beat Houston) until the folks in San Francisco started to do some trash talking.  San Francisco was well in the lead in terms of number of observations for the first few days of the Challenge.

The trash talking from the west coast got everyone fired up here.  It seemed clear that many folks were checking the leaderboard frequently the last few days of the Challenge as the gap between DFW, which was in second place, and San Francisco began to shrink.

The results this year?  The simple answer, according to the locals, is DFW is the winner.  However, the results are more interesting than that. (Results are from the national organizers with my pink comments.)

All 16 cities together: 124,092 observations / 8557 species / 4051 participants
Wow!!  Quite a showing for a very low-key event!

City with the most observations: Dallas/Fort Worth with 23,957 YEA!!
City with the most species found: Houston with 2419
City with the most participants: Los Angeles with 1034 (also includes people who submitted via social media)
City with highest percentage of verifiable observations: Dallas/Fort Worth with 96.3%
City with highest percentage of verifiable observations making it to Research Grade: Chicago with 64.4%
City that added the most new species to their region through the City Nature Challenge: Houston with 594 new species
City that added the most new iNaturalist participants to their region through the City Nature Challenge: Los Angeles with 436 new observers

There were 3077 new species that had not previously been recorded on iNaturalist in these 16 cities, and 5689 (I copied this number from their results, but it doesn't seem like it could be correct.) new iNaturalist observers who had not previously made observations in these 16 cities! 

Most Common DFW Observations.  I thought the more interesting thing was the list of most frequent observations locally.  Far and away the most observed species locally were Pinklady flowers and Common Buckeye butterflies.

I guess Pinkladies being #1 is not totally surprising since they seem to be everywhere right now.

Pinkladies, a species of evening primrose, along City Trail in Highland Village.  Note the bug on the center flower.

 We even saw a white pinklady.

A white Pinklady at least according to the iNaturalist community, along the Bittern Marsh Trail

We saw Common Buckeyes on multiple occasions.

Common Buckeye in the parking lot at LLELA

My favorite Common Buckeye picture

 

The top DFW observations:

1. Pinkladies, 175 observations
2. Common Buckeye, 171
3. Antelope Horns, 149
4. Honey Bee, 149
5. Dakota mock vervain, 136
6. Mallard, 135
7. Northern Cardinal, 134
8. Fox Squirrel, 133
9. Eastern Pondhawk, 125
10. Poison Ivy,  113
11. Great Blue Heron, 106
12. Common Whitetail, 103
13. Green Anole, 100
14. Question Mark, 100
15. Pond Slider, 99
16. Green Antelopehorns, 95
17. Texas Bluebonnet, 94
18. Japanese honeysuckle, 88
19. Gray Hairstreak butterfly, 82
20. Virginia Creeper, 79
21. Indian Blanket, 77
22. Large Milkeweed Bug, 76
23. American Coote, 71
24. Seven-spotted Ladybird, 71
25. Blue Dasher dragonfly, 71
26. Asian Lady Beetle, 69
27. Straggler Daisy, 65
28. Great Egret, 65
29. Hackberry Emperor, 63
30. Mourning Dove, 61

We had observations for all but five of the top 30 DFW observations.  We did not get the following: 

• #3, Antelope Horns (This is a type of milkweed.  We probably saw these but did not list them as a separate observation from green antelopehorns, #16, which we did have.)
• #19, Gray Hairstreak butterfly
• #25 Blue Dasher dragonfly (Actually I think we did see these, but we did not get a picture because they would not sit still.)
• #26 Asian Lady Beetles (Thank goodness we did not see these.  They are a nasty invasive species that masquerades as the normal common ladybug.) 
• #27, Straggler Daisy (We saw lots of different daisies, but I got confused as to what was what.  I need to learn more about plants in general and some of the wildflowers in particular.)

It still stuns me that fox squirrel is only eighth, since we practically trip over them every time we go outside.  Many of the others were new things to us before the challenge, but I guess they really are very common here, at least right now, given how many people reported seeing them.

Most Common Observations in other Cities.  Of course, the most common observations in some of the other cities were different.  The results for all 16 cities (including the top 100, I think, species for each city) are currently accessible from the National History Museum of Los Angeles website, but you have to click down through to see everything and you may need to be logged into iNaturalist.org.  Here are the top observations for a few more cities.

• San Francicso:  California poppy, 185; miner's lettuce, 130; Western Blue-eyed grass, 129
• Los Angeles:  Western fence lizard, 364; fox squirrel, 211; honey bee, 191
• Austin:  Indian blanket, 94; Texas bluebonnet, 69; poison ivy, 64
• Houston:  Pinkladies, 122; Indian blanket, 74; Green anole, 65

What happens next year?  I am not sure, but more cities are to be added to make it an international competition.  I just hope iNaturalist gets enough bandwidth by then.

City Nature Challenge, Part 4 -- Birds

WARNING:  LONG POST.  LOTS OF PICTURES

In the previous three posts I explained the general nature of the 2017 City Nature Challenge, listed some of the insect, reptile, fish, mammal, and amphibian observations, and touched on the plant observations we made during the five day period, April 14-18.  Now let me address the bird observations.

Going into the City Nature Challenge, birds were probably our greatest interest.  That was mainly because we have had more experience with birds.  We also thought there would be more opportunities for observations since many different birds routinely visit the feeders in our backyard.  We ended up posting 43 different bird observations.  A number of those were new birds for us.

Backyard Birds.  As anticipated, we saw a variety of birds at our feeders.  Many of these we had seen many times before.  Those include house finches, blue jays, cardinals, brown thrasher, Carolina chickadee, European starlings, white-winged doves, red-bellied woodpecker, and downy woodpecker.

Brown thrasher

Carolina chickadee, one of our favorite backyard birds

One of the many Downy woodpeckers that frequent our backyard

Red-bellied woodpecker on the feeder as the Downy woodpecker takes off

We were well aware of white-winged doves.  We see them all the time.  However, when I posted the observation on iNaturalist, it indicated they were not in this geographic region.  Huh??  Newsflash to iNaturalist, there are many white-winged doves at least in our backyard.

Seven white-winged doves fighting for space on the feeder.  We have seen as many as twelve on the feeder at once.

I am not sure how often this kind of thing happens, but clearly their data base was wrong.  It is a good idea that iNaturalist flags abnormal sightings, but I did not notice any such notice on my my incorrect identification of a yellow clubtail dragonfly.


Taking pictures of the backyard birds also gave us the opportunity to look more closely at the wren that had built a nest in the birdhouse on the patio, but does not yet seem to be raising a family.  Is it a Carolina wren or a Bewick's wren?  We had at first assumed it was a Carolina wren but decided, based on the longer tail and white marks on the outer tail feathers, that it was a Bewick's wren.  The iNaturalist community agreed.

Our backyard Bewick's wren

A relatively new visitor to our backyard was a yellow-rumped warbler and--totally new for us--was a white-throated sparrow.

Yellow-rumped warbler

White-throated sparrow

Other common birds.  In some of the nearby parks we observed a host of other "common" urban/suburban birds that do not visit our feeders (usually because they do not eat seeds).  That included mockingbirds, crows, robins, bluebirds, great-tailed grackles, pigeons, house sparrows, Canada geese, and mourning doves.  We saw our first local red-winged blackbird as well as new, for us, a chipping sparrow and a Savannah sparrow.  Somewhat common, but still exciting to see was one of the first scissor-tail fly catchers of the year. 

Scissor-tail fly catcher

Water birds.  Being near Lewisville Lake and the Trinity River provides us with multiple opportunities to see water birds.  Many of these are migratory, so what birds we see depends heavily on the calendar.  We are still learning what to expect at different times of the year. 

There were many great blue herons along the Trinity River. Despite their large size, they are remarkably skittish.  Fortunately this one let the Frog get relatively close.

The Frog taking a picture of a great blue heron on the Bittern Marsh Trail along the Trinity River on 4-18-17.  The river level that day, according to the USGS, was just under 11.5 feet.  At that level the trail was dry close to the dam but impassable a bit further south (at the marsh outflow) due to high water.

It resulted in a nice close-up before he finally took off.

We saw both snowy egrets and  great egrets.  Snowy egrets are smaller, have a black beak and yellow feet. 

Snowy egret

Great egrets are larger, have a yellow beak and black feet.

Great egret

Although many ducks that were here this winter have gone, mallards continue to be relatively easy to spot in multiple places. 

Mallards

I am not exactly sure what a grebe is, but we saw a  pied-billed grebe, which was a first for us.

pied-billed grebe

Coots (sometimes called mud hens) are not ducks, but we almost always see them on the water.  At least some of them were still around.

American coots

Most of the ring-billed gulls that were plentiful this winter have moved on, although we did see one.

Ring-billed gull

Large numbers of Franklin's gulls (sometimes called prairie doves due to how flocks of Franklin's gulls follow behind farmers plowing in a field) were making all kinds of noise as they flew high overhead, migrating from their winter homes as far south as South America to the northern plains.  They were too high to photograph in flight, but we did see several on the ground.

Franklin's gull at Lake Park

 We also caught a glimpse of what turned out to be a Forster's Tern.  This was a new bird for us.

Forster's tern

Several kingfishers were racing around and diving for fish in the river.  We usually hear them before we see them and rarely get a picture, but did catch sight of this one.

Belted kingfisher

We had seen many many cormorants all winter, although I think those were double-crested cormorants that had already migrated out of the area.  We almost did not go down the Redbud Trail because it was so muddy, but ran into these two neotropic cormorants hanging out on the Trinity River just before we had to turn around due to high water.  This was another first for us and definitely worth slogging through the mud to see.

Neotropic cormorants -- notice the webbed feet even though perched on a branch

Raptors.  We had hoped to see the elusive bald eagles that occasionally hang out near the Lewisville Lake Dam.  We did not see them but we did see a Swainson's hawk diving for prey on the dam, an osprey over the river (the only one we saw after seeing dozens earlier in the year), and a red-shouldered hawk atop a telephone pole in the construction zone next to I-35.

 

Swainson's hawk

Swainson's hawk (we think) hovering over the dam looking for prey

An osprey soaring over the Trinity River

Red-shouldered hawk on top of a telephone pole wondering what we were doing

Vultures.  Last but not least are the vultures.  We often see vultures soaring on thermals high in the air.  Only in the last year or so did I learn that there were two types of vultures in Texas, black vultures and turkey vultures.  Although they are usually too far away to see the color of their heads, that is the most definitive means of identification.  Black vultures have a black head and turkey vultures are larger and have a red head.  Although both feed on carrion, it was not until I saw an article in the March 2017 issue of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine that I learned how different the two are in how they find food. 

Turkey vultures forage by smell, an ability that is uncommon among birds.  They often fly low to the ground to pick up the scent of decaying flesh.

Turkey vulture

Turkey vulture -- note red head, light colored flight feathers

Black vultures have a poor sense of smell but very sharp vision.  When higher-flying black vultures see turkey vultures descend to feed, they swoop down and drive away the less assertive, more solitary turkey vultures.  I don't know if that means the groups of vultures soaring together high in the sky are always black vultures, but I will start to pay more attention to their shape in flight to see if I can identify them even from a distance.

A kettle of black vultures circling high above.  Note shorter, more rounded wings.  The lighter color is only on the tips of the wings (although I can rarely see that since they are so high).

Black vulture

BTW, what is a group of vultures called?  That depends.  According to Wikipedia, a group of vultures is called a wake, committee, kettle, venue, or volt.  Wake is reserved for a group of vultures that are feeding.  The term kettle refers to vultures in flight, while committee refers to vultures at rest or in trees.  Really?! Committee = vultures at rest??  That sounds too much like a bad joke.  I think I am going to have to verify that from an independent source.

WOW.  That was an unbelievable amount of neat stuff in only a five day time period and within 10 minutes of home. 

City Nature Challenge, Part 3 -- Plants

In the previous two posts I explained the general nature of the 2017 City Nature Challenge and listed some of the insect, reptile, fish, mammals, and amphibian observations we made during the five day period, April 14-18.  Now let me address plants.

Plants.  We had not spent much time considering plants when thinking about the City Challenge.  In fact, we were not even sure until the Challenge started that it included plants.  As it turned out, we got almost as many plants (66) as all of the different types of animals and insects combined (86).  However, it is also true that the percentage of unconfirmed identifications was higher for the plants than most of the other categories.  We were probably less interested in these than most of the categories, but still found some interesting things.

Little things in the "grass".  One of the things I learned from this project was the identity of some common weeds in grass.  I was familiar with white clover, violets, and dandelions, but some of the other things I had seen many times but could not name were black medick (what I would have called "yellow clover"), field madder (the weed with the tiny purple flowers), and common vetch (a plant with "mimosa-like" leaves that makes green and black bean pods).

black medick or hop clover

field madder

Common vetch that is taller since it has not been mowed

Trees.  Plants also of course include trees.  We are really bad at tree identification.  Some of the common ones are easy and we did get quite a few, but we were surprised at the many possible species choices for some types of trees.  Although we are not likely to encounter many of these, there are something like 35 species of oak trees in Texas.

What I identified merely as an oak, but what multiple people said was a post oak

Identification of trees is an area we are going to work on.  I am looking for good resources, but this site from TAMU seems like a good place to start.

Other "weeds".  We also saw lots of the other plants we had been encountering for years, especially while geocaching.  That included poison ivy, saw greenbrier (who knew there were 300-350 species of greenbrier!), Virginia creeper, Japanese honeysuckle, mustang grape, Southern dewberry (what I think of as "fake" blackberries), thistles (but what kind??), bastard cabbage, mesquite trees, prickly pear cactus, yuccas, bull nettle, wild onion, and milkweed (TPWD identifies 37 milkweed species in Texas!).

Wild onion, I think.  At least it smelled oniony

Green antelope horns, a type of milkweed.  The orange bugs are large milkweed bugs.

New things.  We did  encounter some brand new things, including common duckweed (maybe not really new, but I had been calling it pond scum), and arrowheads (an interesting marsh flower).

Common duckweed

What we identified as Delta Arrowheads

Wildflowers.  There were many other plants, but we were fortunate that the Challenge was in April because by far and away our favorite plants were the wildflowers which are in bloom this time of year.  I won't try to list them all, but some of the highlights include pinkladies, Texas paintbrush (what I would have called Indian paintbrush), wine mallow, Indian blanket, black-eyed susans, upright prairie coneflower (ummm....Mexican hat to most people), Texas vervain, Dakota mock vervain, blue-eyed grass, at least three types of daisies, and of course bluebonnets.

Pinkladies

Texas paintbrush and wine mallow

Indian blanket

Black-eyed susan

Mexican hat

Texas vervain

Dakota mock vervain

Blue-eyed grass

Ox-eye daisy?

Huisace daisy?

Arkansas lazy daisy

Bluebonnets

These were far from the best specimens of many of these flowers we had ever seen, but this was all about quantity of observations.  It was actually amazing the number of things we found within ten minutes of our house in this five day period.