Bird Board

We need your bird photos from Friday-Monday!

Hi birders of South Florida!

At the bottom of the post are some birds we don't have photos/audio of for the City Nature Challenge, which ended yesterday, Monday. We made it to 100 bird species but are still missing some expected birds! If you photographed or recorded audio of any of the below species in Miami-Dade, Broward or Monroe from Friday to Monday, it would be a big contribution if you could upload them to iNaturalist.org :-)

The website is pretty user-friendly and asks that you include a location. You can be specific or just click on a general area if you prefer. You can also obscure the location if it was at your home and you don't want the location online.

If you don't have time to upload them, you can send them to me (jmont034 -at- fiu.edu) and I will create a profile for you and upload them for you!! We are trying to have as many species as possible.

As of right now we have documented 1,060 species --of everything-- in Dade, Broward and Monroe. This includes plants, insects, birds, reptiles, fungi etc. etc.... all organisms! That number does not include captive/cultivated species such as garden plants, which we have been actively labeling as such to only show true wild biodiversity.

Here is the list. I tried to loosely group them to make it easier to look through them. Also remember you can press ctrl + f to search through a web page for a word.

Birds we are missing for the South Florida City Nature Challenge (CNCSOFLO):
Killdeer
Black-bellied plover
Semipalmated plover
Piping plover
Ruddy turnstone
Semipalmated sandpiper
Least sandpiper
Solitary sandpiper
Short-billed dowitcher
Black skimmer
Sandwich tern
Least tern

Red-breasted merganser
Blue-winged teal
American coot
Pied-billed grebe

Reddish egret
Glossy ibis
Snowy egret
Roseate spoonbill
Black-crowned night heron

Belted kingfisher

Merlin
Cooper's hawk
Red-tailed hawk
Short-tailed hawk
Barn owl
Great horned owl

Black-whiskered vireo
Red-eyed vireo
Yellow-throated vireo
American kestrel
Blue-headed vireo

Ruby-throated hummingbird
Least flycatcher
Eastern kingbird
Summer tanager
Scarlet tanager
Yellow-billed cuckoo
Veery
Brown thrasher

Pine warbler
Black-throated green warbler
Hooded warbler
Prothonotoary warbler
Northern waterthrush

House finch
Black-faced grassquit

Chimney swift
Tree swallow
Cave swallow
Cliff swallow

Any species you can contribute are a big help and feel free to check the website out and post any other nature photos you took from Friday-Monday. The point of the challenge is to observe as many species as possible and get the public involved with citizen science, what's not to love??

Check out some of the observations here and click around through the filters/search to see how the data is available to the public to help us all learn more about the biodiversity in our backyard and beyond:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?order_by=votes&place_id=any&project_id=60315&subview=table

Note that the most faved observation so far is an amethyst hairsteak! A critically endangered and very hard to find butterfly... awesome find by @cattleya721

Some other awesome observations if you have a little more time on your hands:
Sargassum fish observed by @lkel21: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43231201
Common gallinule feeding its chick by @kuchipatchis : https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43437226
Double-crested cormorant feeding on a spotted tilpia by @junelenny: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43765983
Critically endangered and ultra rare amethys hairsteak by @cattleya721: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43750479
Nymph planthopper species by @jcs13: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43460452
Barred owl by @evergladesnatalie : https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43523688
Corn snake by @lisnel: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43791818
Delta flower scarab by @jaykeller: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43797676
Rainbow scarab beetle by @adamold: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43185377
Blooming big-mouth star orchid by @juddpatterson: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43193770
Cage mushroom by @kwmermaid: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/43638516

Thanks and hope you can join in on the fun,
Joe

Comments

Jay Keller
over 4 years ago

Great post Joe and I second all of your points of the value of the CNC. This year was obviously more of a challenge to find species since a lot of places were closed due to the virus, but it's amazing what participants were able to do despite that. Sometimes just having a reason to get out there can inspire new interest in nature, especially among our youth, and sometimes we find things like my Bahama Mockingbird that wouldn't have been found if I didn't have to be in Broward County for the count.

If you have photos of birds or other organisms and can contribute them, it would be a big help to the count anf iNaturalist in general. If you set up an iNat profile now, you will be all set for next year's count! ;-)

Thanks,

Jay Keller

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