Diario del proyecto City Nature Challenge 2024: Brazos Valley, TX

The 2024 City Nature Challenge (CNC) is imminent! The Texas Master Naturalist program tomorrow night (Thursday, the 18th) at 6:30 p.m. (social at 6:00) will be on the Brazos Valley CNC. It will cover What is the CNC, the history of the Brazos Valley CNC, and How to participate. The program is free and all are welcome. The program will be at the Gary Halter Nature Center at Lick Creek Park, NOT at the usual AgriLife location!

Bruce Neville
Brazos Valley CNC Coordinator

I presented on the 2024 City Nature Challenge to the Brazos Valley Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists last night at Lick Creek Park. We had a good crowd, and they had great questions. For those who could not attend, the presentation, including my speaker's notes and alt-text for the graphics, can be found at

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1E3Be1xifCTsMeojTuRaUWOqdl0jK1ZIv/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=117658130948907672076&rtpof=true&sd=true

A pdf version is available at

http://txmn.org/brazos/files/The-City-Nature-Challenge.pdf

One slide mentions a Beginner's Guide to iNaturalist that I wrote a couple years ago. It is available at

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XcsucKNtL3f4rORQOMB4FwyEACYqAcQN/edit

All of these are licensed under a Creative Commons cc-by-nc license, so feel free to adapt and share.

Bruce

We're just a little less than 4 hours from the start of the City Nature Challenge! At one second after midnight tomorrow, you can start your observations! Who will get that first owl? Will my barred owl grace me after midnight, and will he call long enough for me to get a recording?

Shall I set us a goal or two? Last year, I wanted to break 1000 species. Y'all blew me away by breaking that number on Day Two! We ended up at 1,147 species, more than I dared dream! Dare I hope for 1,200 species this year? 1,300? Observations jumped from 2,808 in 2022 to 3,246 in 2023. Can we do 3,500 this year? 4,000? Let's not do observations just for observation's sake, but it's okay to "observe" the same species in multiple areas to show distribution, or if you find one that's blooming. If we have a decent storm Friday night and a fallout, document any migrants you can. Remember that the iNat app also has a microphone setting.

Don't forget also that, just because something is common, that someone will necessarily "observe" it. It took three years and a special plea to get Feral Pigeon. We haven't gotten Spanish moss yet, and I drive by it every year!

I'll try to post to the project journal every night, if I'm not too tired. Comments and questions appreciated! Let me know you're reading these!

But, remember, the most important thing is to HAVE FUN! We might get washed out this year, and that's okay, too. We'll all learn something and have fun in the process.

Bruc

Day One is about done. I'm sure there are observations that will be trickling in. As I write this (10:30 pm), we have 1,694 observations of 677 species by 83 observers!!! That's stupendous for a first day, and a weekday, at that! Of course, the species count gets harder from here on out. The current leaders are Little Ol' Me with 209 observations, Dwight Bohlmeyer with 152 species, and Salt Marsh Moth with 14 observations. With all the salt marsh caterpillars I saw crossing the road today, I'm surprised there's any greenery left within 100 miles! Dwight also gets the prize for bang-for-the-buck, with 152 species in 161 observations or an observation-to-species ratio of only 1.06!

It took me three trips down Wilson Shoals Road in Madison County, but I finally found the one stupid tree with Spanish moss on it! So, we have one observation of Spanish moss in four years of the challenge. We have 62 species of birds, with great-tailed grackle leading the pack. Duh! We have 8 species of warbler (and chat), which ain't bad, but let's hope they have a killer day at the Big Sit tomorrow. Keep an eye out for feral pigeons. We don't have that one yet. We have 56 species of Lepidoptera, which is pretty good. I'm glad someone got them, but I'm sorry I missed the 2 great purple hairstreaks. One of my favorites. We got 4 tawny emperors, the first in 4 years of the challenge. (I tried, but missed it.) It may be a bit late (or early?) to pick up monarch. We have 13 species of odonate, 32 of beetle (including both the greater and lesser of two weevils), 15 of true fly, 24 of hymenopteran, 20 of hemipteran, 4 of orthoptera, a lacewing, a fishfly, a termite, a caddisfly, and a barklouse! Laura, cover your ears. We have 11 species of arachnid. We have 3 mammals, 10 reptiles, 5 amphibians, and 1 fish. And there are 2 mollusks and 2 "others": roly-poly and a millipede. A nice round 400 of those species are plants. I don't know enough about plants to know what's good or bad. There are 26 species of fungi and lichens.

I've had enough for one day. Catch you tomorrow!
Bruce

I just got done looking at the plant list. Unfortunately, I had to disallow a large number of species from the list that were obviously cultivated specimens. The goal of the City Nature Challenge is to document WILD flora, fauna, and funga. Cultivated or captive organisms are not part of our native flora and should not be included in the CNC. They can be included in iNat, but should be marked as "captive/cultivated" or "organism is not wild." That way, they get a casual marker and go in your own records, but not in the public database of wild organisms.

Organisms, particularly plants, in parks and gardens can be problematic. Things to look for: If they have a sign telling you what they are, they probably don't count. If they have watering lines or are mulched, they probably don't count. If they are surrounded by nice borders or sidewalks, they probably don't count. If they are a specimen tree surrounded by nice, mowed lawns, they probably don't count. Virtually all crape myrtles don't count. If they have artificial supports, they probably don't count. If they are in cages that look like they were built for them, they probably don't count.

So, what can you count? Obviously wild plants on the borders of parks probably do count. Plants struggling to survive frequent mowing in yards, probably do count. But the grasses we lavish all that water on are "cultivated," so don't bother with them. Roadside flowers originally sown by TexDOT are marginal, but are probably self-supporting, so give them the benefit of the doubt. Birds and butterflies coming to flowers in a garden or in and out of zoo cages probably count. Animals that are temporarily restrained for photographing them (fish in viewing boxes, that velvet ant that I should have put in a petri dish today, snakes grabbed before they get away, and fish caught by fishermen were wild up until the point at which they were captured, even if they are shortly to become dinner.

When in doubt, it's probably cultivated.
Bruce

Thanks to all you hardy souls who braved the heat and wind today in the name of the Brazos Valley City Nature Challenge. I could only take it until about 3:00 today. I thought the Big Sit was today, but it's tomorrow. I hope they get a break in the weather and are able to iNat the heck out of Brison! Good luck, everyone!

I just checked in on the project, and we're at 3,135 observations of 1,002 species by 135 observers! Am I making this too easy? Should I up the stakes? Seriously, though, you people are UH-MAY-ZING!!! And the first thousand species are the easiest. I noted that we had never had Spanish moss, American coot, or hackberry emperor on the previous three challenges. Tick, tick, and TICK! I spent the day looking for rock doves, a.k.a., stupid pigeons, but, fortunately someone got some. I'm really going to have to look by the end of the challenge to find something obvious that we're now missing.

For the stats, and I'm sure these will change as more people upload their contributions,

Most observations: Me (307, just shy of 100 today)
Most species: Me, again (187, followed very closely by Dwight Bohlmeyer at 184 who maintains his observation-to-species ratio of 1.05)
Most observed species: Salt Marsh Moth (27, all but 2 are caterpillars)

Plants: 458 spp
Fungi and Lichens: 41 spp
Mammals: 5 spp
Birds: 94 spp
Reptiles: 19 spp
Amphibians: 5 spp
Fishes: 24 spp (someone's been busy!)
Insects: 316 spp
Arachnids: 23 spp
"Other": 8 spp (2 terrestrial isopods, 1 freshwater shrimp, 1 crayfish, 2 millipedes, 1 springtail, 1 leech)

Breaking down the insects:

Bristletails and Silverfishes: 0 spp (if we get rained out tomorrow, I may go through some old boxes looking for these)
Mayflies: 2 spp
Odonates: 15 spp
Zorapterans: 0 spp (iNat calls these "Angel Insects")
Earwigs: 0 spp
Stoneflies: 0 spp
Orthopterans: 22 spp
Webspinners: 1 sp
Walkingsticks: 3 spp
Mantids: 1 sp
Cockroaches and Termites: 4 spp (yes, they're closely related; termites are just specialized cockroaches!)
Thrips: 0 spp
True Bugs and Allies: 49 spp
Dobsonflies: 1 sp
Snakeflies: 0 spp
Lacewings and Allies: 3 spp
Strepsipterans: 0 spp
Beetles: 65 spp
Hymenopterans: 37 spp
Caddisflies: 1 sp
Butterflies and Moths: 83 spp
Scorpionflies and Allies: 0 spp
Fleas: 1 sp (I was going to make that tomorrow's challenge, but somebody beat me to it!)
True Flies: 26 spp

Great work, everyone! Good luck tomorrow!
Bruce

As I look over the lists, I still see some holes. Please keep an eye out for:

Butterflies:
Northern Cloudywing
Tropical Checkered-Skipper
Orange Skipperling
Southern Skipperling
Sachem
Southern Broken-Dash
Ocola Skipper
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
Southern Dogface
Sleepy Orange
Dainty Sulphur (surprisingly hard in our area)
Red-banded Hairstreak
Dusky-blue Groundstreak (this and the last hybridize in our area)
Reakirt's Blue
Red-spotted Admiral
Silvery Checkerspot
Bordered Patch
Goatweed Leafwing
Gemmed Satyr
Carolina/Intricate Satyr (requires excellent photo of underwings to differentiate)

Birds (keep an eye out, I know they can be hard to document and some may have left already)
Pied-billed Grebe
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Common Nighthawk
Chuck-will's-widow
Hudsonian Godwit
Spotted Sandpiper
Greater Yellowlegs
oddball shorebirds
any gull or tern
Double-crested Cormorant
Little Blue Heron (I had it and the battery in my camera died!)
White-faced Ibis
Osprey
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Bald Eagle (see "Little Blue Heron," above)
Swainson's Hawk
RED-TAILED HAWK (okay, there's your assignment!)
any owl
Belted Kingfisher
Pileated Woodpecker
any falcon (except Crested Caracara)
any Empidonax
Eastern Phoebe
PURPLE MARTIN (assignment number two!)
House Wren (too late?)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet (too late?0
Brown Thrasher
American Pipit (too late?)
any sparrow but House, Lark, or Lincoln's
Yellow-headed Blackbird
Brewer's Blackbird
many warblers

Insects:
Common Whitetail
Common Green Darner (consider it a challenge)
Black Saddlebags
any cicada (too early?)
Caterpillar Hunter
Gray Lady Beetle

Other:
WHITE-TAILED DEER (assignment number three!)
Little Brown Skink
Southern Leopard Frog

Plants: Sorry. I don't know enough to know what's missing and what's not. Maybe one of you botany types can go through the list and find some obvious targets and post.

Bruce

The thunder is rumbling outside as I write this journal entry. What was supposed to be a complete washout turned out not to be so bad. I spoke by text early on with Mark McDermott at the Big Sit, who described it as "slow." The rain chances kept going down and pushing back, so I headed out to see what I could do. I went back to Madison County, where I found my Little Blue Herons in the very same tree I left them on Friday and got photos for the Challenge! I picked up a few other things on yesterday's target list and on my own Challenge species list. I guess I got out just in time. I heard tornado warnings for Robertson and other counties north on my way home and just saw https://www.kcentv.com/article/weather/weather-aware-tornado-warnings-issued-parts-central-texas/500-01947ba6-2744-40f6-90ae-6d3e644fb6a7 as I started this post.

As I write this, we're sitting at 4,041 observations of 1,164 species by 174 observers, all new records for the Challenge! I suspect the 1,200-species mark will be broken by the time I wake up in the morning, with all the data uploads this evening. We already had observations from all six counties when I checked this morning. I'm still leading with 378 observations and 223 species. Salt Marsh Caterpillars are still the leading species, now with 39 observations.

I'm not going to go through all the various taxa in detail, but we have 496 species (42.69%) of plants, 398 species (34.25%) of insects, 113 (9.72%) of birds, and 49 species (4.22%) of fungi and lichens, with lesser numbers of other taxa. We still have the same 8 taxa of "other." Our research grade observations are just under 25% already, which is great.

Of yesterday's "target" species, we picked up: Tropical Checkered-Skipper (misidentified as Common/White Checkered-Skipper), Goatweed Leafwing, Common Nighthawk, Spotted Sandpiper (not by me; I saw one, but couldn't photograph it), Black and Forster's Terns, Little Blue Heron (2), Bald Eagle, Red-tailed Hawk (2), Eastern Screech-Owl, Pileated Woodpecker, Purple Martin (2), White-throated Sparrow, Cerulean Warbler, Common Whitetail, and Little Brown Skink. We're still missing White-tailed Deer! I flushed one at Lake Madison today, but my camera wasn't ready, and we scared each other so badly that I missed the shot.

Somebody got an American Alligator at ENRTA today. Without digging too deeply, that may be my observation of the day. :-)

One more day of observations. If you don't have time to get them all uploaded by tomorrow night, you can still upload observations through NEXT Sunday night, as long as they were taken within the four-day observation period. And don't forget to help with the identifications through Sunday night of next week as well. TMNers, you can get volunteer credit for sitting at the computer in your jammies doing IDs!

Thank you ALL! Whether you've made one observation or three hundred, they all contribute to the cause and to the database. We literally could not do it without you. Thank you.
Bruce

Much of the fun of iNaturalist is contributing to projects, such as the City Nature Challenge, but there are hundreds of other projects out there to which you can contribute, and you probably already are without knowing it. Entering observations gives implicit permission for "umbrella" projects, like the City Nature Challenge, to harvest those observations. (That was in the fine print you didn't read when you joined iNat.)
Umbrella projects are the most common types of projects and are used for things like park lists, bio-blitzes, faunal inventories, and the like. "Traditional" projects, which are less common nowadays, are more complex and require special permission to set up, have additional features, and can be opted into and out of. I'll mention one of those later on.

So, why should you participate in an umbrella project? Well, you can follow it, and you can get notification of events and journal posts, like this one. You can follow it and see what others have contributed. To find projects, go to "Community" in the top menu and select "Projects." You can search by keywords. "Brazos" brings up 63, "texas" brings up 1,700, and "birds" brings up 7,458! If you took the TMN training in the last couple years, you can search "txmnbv ento" to find the project I set up to track your entomology homework! You may already see projects such as "Birds of Texas" or "Plants of Texas" sprouting up in the projects list for your observations.

So, what are some local projects you might be interested in? How about:
Ants of Brazos County
Brazos County Managed Pollinator Host Plants
Butterflies in the Brazos
Madison County, Texas, Flora and Fauna (broke 1,000 species today--yippee!!)
Rio Brazos Turtles
TAMU-ENRTA Property Inventory
Texas A&M University Campus Biodiversity

There have also been set up 13 Park Biota projects to aid in the Bird City Application for the City of College Station. The parks are: Bee Creek, Brison, Brothers Pond, Gabbard, Hensel, John Crompton, Lemon Tree, Lick Creek, Schob (Nature Center), Southwood Community Center and Bachman, Stephen C. Beachy Central, Veterans, and Wolf Pen Creek. Observations in these parks form a database that will support the City's application. You don't have to tag your observations--they've already been added. Retroactively! There is also a catch-all Biota of College Station project with 62, 315 observations of 4,251 species by 2,457 observers!

What about some of those 1,700 Texas-based projects? How about:
Alligators of Texas
Beetles of Texas
Birds of the Texas State Parks
Cacti of Texas
Crayfishes of Texas
Fire Ants of Texas
Fungi of Texas
Herps of Texas
Insects of Texas
Moths of Texas
Native Texas Organisms
Natural Bird Hybrids of Texas
Oaks of Texas
Plants of Texas
Raptors of Texas
Roadkills of Texas
Terrestrial Mollusks of Texas
Texas Endemic Species
Texas Invasives
Texas Milkweeds and Monarchs
Texas National Wildlife Refuges
Texas Nature Tracker Projects
Texas Odonata
Texas Seasahells
Texas Wildflower Watch
and 1,675 others!

I mentioned a "traditional" project that you should consider joining. Do you know those Great Texas Wildlife Trail maps you see at the State Parks and such? They were last updated around 2018 and some are older than that. TPWD has ONE QUARTER-TIME PERSON to update 9 maps, nearly 400 loops, and several thousand sites! They've asked Master Naturalists to help, but anybody can join and "play." They are also trying to include all flora and fauna of the sites, not just birds and butterflies. You do need to join this project. It is "GTWT Adopt-a-Loop." When adding observations to the project, you need to scroll down on the right side to "Observation Fields, type in "Place of Observation (site number)" or enough for it to auto-fill, then enter the site number. Our site numbers are:
PPWW 008 Lick Creek Park
PPWW 009 D.A. “Andy” Anderson Arboretum
PPWW 011 Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History
PPWW 012 Lake Bryan
PPWW 013A Apache Pass (removed, no public access)
PPWW 013B Frances Nabours Griffin Bird Sanctuary, Wilson Ledbetter Park
PPWW 014 Rosebud City Lake (removed, no public access)
[PPWW is the "Prairies and Pineywoods West" map] Other site numbers can be found at the interactive online map at https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wildlife/wildlife-trails/ If you observed in any of these sites during the Challenge, please consider joining AAL and adding your observations. This project does NOT harvest retroactively, but you can use batch edit to add multiple observations from a given trip or retroactively.

Hope you'll consider adding additional value to your observations using multiple projects.
Bruce

Couldn't resist. When I finished that last post, I had to check the numbers. We're at 1,202 species and counting!