I have spent most of my lockdown time exploring old agricultural fields looking for this BAP fungus. From the reading I have done on this species (unfortunately there is very little research done on this species, so little of it's ecology is known) it only exists in areas with ecological continuity. This means that it normally occurs in areas that have had old coppiced Hazel. It is also believed to be parasitic on the Glue-crust fungus, a fungus that 'glues' the limbs of affected trees together, meaning that potential 'host' trees are easily found.

I have found multiple trees that haven't appeared to have had any sort of coppicing, due to their age and the position of the tree (it was in a hard to reach location). Could this potentially change the ecology of this species? (Probably not, but very little research has been conducted on this species and it's ecology).

I will continue to search for more individuals of this species.

Do you have a favorite taxon? And you want to be sure to find every observation which might be that taxon?

Or maybe you can think of a taxon people are constantly miss-identifying? (Ugh.)

Introducing your new favorite tricks:
&ident_taxon_id=
and
&without_taxon_id=

How to use them?

In haar weblog heeft arboretum_amy arboretum_amy, 16 januari 2021 06:16 een voorbeeld geplaatst:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/2021-jan-feb-id-a-thon/journal/45541-fun-trick-with-search-urls

Observed that a fence that runs parallel to Five Mile Rd had fallen into the creek on Township greenspace property. The fence seems to run along the border of State, County, and Township property. Although much of it has fallen into Township greenspace. I'm guessing that the State or County maintains this fence. It looks like there were actually two fences. The initial fence fell into the greenspace long ago and is still there (much of it laying in the bottom of the creek). The second fence built further from the creek, is now also falling into the creek (on greenspace managed land). It would be silly to build a third fence and risk the creek meandering yet again only to destroy a third fence. Suggest that the Township work with County and State to build the fence near the top of the embankment instead of so close to the creek.

I copied the first post in my personal journal to that for my Fall Creek savanna restoration project. New entries will appear there.

Nov. 2108: Took possession of 6.7 acres on site of old Fall Creek School, with vestiges evident around the homesite. A dozen or so mature Garry oaks (Quercus garryana) are on the place, including the iconic one at entrance: 6 ft. DBH, canopy as broad as high, probably pre-settlement age. Outside mowed area around house, ground covered in invasive alien shrub species, particularly Crataegus monogyna and Rubus bifrons; and at least 47 (by eventual count) other introduced graminoids, forbs and woody species. I was astonished to find that despite all the weeds, at least 114 (by eventual count) native plant species are extant, in some cases as single individuals. Fragaria virginiana ssp. platypetala is dominant throughout. Camassia quamash ssp. maximaand C. leichtlinii ssp. suksdorfii are both abundant, as are Brodiaea elegans ssp. hooveri, Potentilla gracilis var. gracilis, Prunella vulgaris ssp. lanceolata and Sidalcea malviflora ssp. virgata. There is a diverse Carex component. And so forth: See project lists.

Not long after I moved in, my near, dear neighbor Tanya Harvey suggested I contact the Restoration Projects Manager for the Middle Fork Willamette Watershed Council, one Audrey Squires. Audrey secured a $11,300 grant to restoring a "legacy oak" site. Starting in July 2019, Audrey's contractor Rosario Franco of Aumsville used a brush masticator on a bobcat, to grind the woody invasives down flat, while his crew sprayed the larger stumps with triclopyr choline, as Vastlan. That left a lot of woody debris in all size classes on the ground, albeit mostly flat and easily traversed. He and his crew returned four more times to broadcast-apply generic clopyralid and clethodim. I paid for one more broadcast application of fluazifop-p-butyl, as Fusilade DX, by Glass Tree Care and Spray Service of Eugene after the grant money ran out. The results of all that treatment is that I don't have an immediate problem with most weeds in the Asteraceae, Fabaceae or Poaceae, and some of the natives in those families appear to have survived. There are still areas dense with weeds not sensitive to clopyralid, however.

In October 2020, I spot-sprayed in the 'oak patch' with either glyphosate or triclopyr, trying to preserve native sedges especially, while not risking the oaks. Six weeks later, I used a belly-grinder to seed about an acre under the oaks; and also the spring-seep in the northern rocky 'bank' between the upper and lower meadows (a spot already rich in showy natives), with a mix of grasses and perennial and annual forbs I bought from Lynda Boyer, "The Prairie Godmother of the Willamette Valley". The mix contains Danthonia californica, which requires 12 weeks of winter stratification to germinate.

Since then, I've spot-sprayed the southern bank with glyphosate or triclopyr, prior to seeding with a mix containing only small-seeded grasses. FWIW, that brings this brief summary up to Jan. 18, 2021. I can't promise frequent updates!

Da alcune settimane, i birdwatcher segnalavano gruppi di tordi sasselli in diverse zone della provincia.
Qualche giorno fa, il nostro collaboratore, Giuseppe Speranza, durante una passeggiata al Parco di Gocciadoro, ha osservato uno piccolo stormo di almeno 17 individui, in sosta sui grandi alberi del parco.
Nella stessa uscita, avvistate anche almeno quattro capinere, svernante sempre più comune anche alle nostre latitudini!

On the way back from Clarke Rock, J and I decided to look for hooded nudis before taking Radio Flyer out of the water. Sure enough, they were on the eel grass just off the boat launch. There was also a mollusc of some kind in the background of a photo I'm curious about.

Day dive to Clarke Rock. Wicked surface current to start that cleared up once we got under. Dropped down the chain right to the two GPO buddies who've lived within a few meters of each other for the last few months. Big middens outside of both dens. White-lined tubeworm out on a rock, another GPO. Copper rockfish with a tail fin sticking out of its mouth (would later see it again, being dive-bombed by other Coppers looking for a bite). Normal blood star and a rigid blood star (Henricia aspera). A really white GPO that J found, but interrupted by three Stellers. Finally one wolf eel, with a nice big grin. A mosshead warbonnet in an old scallop shell. Red dorid. Rhino crab. A few green sea urchins with nice hats.

Day dive at Wall Beach to see if the lingcod eggs are around yet (they are not). Highlights: a sea star hanging on like a rock climber, 4 brown rockfish, 1 black rockfish (first I've seen on this side of the island), tiger rockfish, 2 GPO friends within a few meters of each other, butterfly crab.

Night dive at Elliott, 27ft max The tide was way out. Beautiful stars out overhead. Lots of spot prawns and dock shrimp, including many shedded casings (zombie army? haha). Opalescent inshore squid to start, padded sculpin, pacific cod, snailfish, two little red octopus, a baby sunflower star, several pregnant red rock crabs, one red rock digging a hole in the sand and using its claw arm like a bulldozer, high cockscomb, and lots of YOY herring in less than 5 ft of water at the end. I took out my reg and switched to my snorkel. They didn't like the exhale.

Друзья, все новости проекта "Серая шейка" будут публиковаться в Журнале проекта "Российская зима", дабы не плодить сущности.
Спасибо за понимание и подписывайтесь на "Российскую зиму", а также журнал проекта "Птицы России", где всё только самое важное.

Друзья, с небольшим опозданием (по причине проходившей в эти выходные "Серой шейки") об итогах первой половины января.

Вначале всё-же к "Серой шейке" - Всероссийскому зимнему учёту водоплавающих, который в шестой раз проходит в формате именно всероссийского. В прошлом году был пилотный проект на iNat, который начался сразу после зимних школьных каникул, и проходил 2 недели (10-25 января). В этом году задан аналогичный период (9-24 января), но уже на раннее утро понедельника результаты по количеству наблюдателей и количеству наблюдений более чем в 2 раза превысили прошлогодние за весь период: 130 наблюдателей и 514 наблюдений (63 и 223
в прошлом году соответственно). С количеством видов пока не так прогрессивно - +2 к прошлому году, но и в целом водных и околоводных не так много.

Теперь к самой "Российской зиме": на утро понедельника нам не хватило всего 2 наблюдений до 25.000 (!). Но зато уже 252 вида.

Двигаемся дальше, уже совсем скоро, в последние выходные января, стартует Био-Блиц "10 Зимних выходных", правила его совсем скоро.

Today I felt fortunate to see four male and three female Buffleheads - (Bucephala albeola), because usually I see none. I observed them exhibiting head bobbing, diving, and wing flapping, usually in response to each other's behavior.

The following information came from this fascinating paper:
Neglected juveniles; a call for integrating all amphibian life stages in assessments of mitigation success (and how to do it), (Silviu O. Petrovan and Benedikt R. Schmidt, Biological Conservation 236 (2019) 252–260))

• Some juveniles apparently disperse diurnally in contrast to nocturnal dispersal in adults and their emigration has unpredictable timing and direction (they're not familiar with the landscape).
• Juveniles cross the road in the opposite direction of adults. In other words, when the rainy season starts, juveniles emigrate away from vernal pools to the highlands while the adults are migrating from the highlands toward the vernal pools and reservoir.
• Post-metamorphic juveniles are extremely small and are therefore more susceptible to dehydration on the road.
• Juvenile carcasses don't stay on the road long. One study found that 80% of the smaller bodied amphibian carcasses were gone from the road within 24 h. "... the combination of small, soft-bodied amphibians with warm, wet surfaces results in rapid carcass destruction, removal by scavengers or decomposition and thus leaves very little evidence of road mortality events (Santos et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2018)."
• Some conservationists have found that amphibian population viability is not particularly sensitive to adult survival and mitigations directed towards post-metamorphic juveniles have stronger effects on population viability than those that improve adult survival.
• The authors state: "We conclude from the review of amphibian population models that there is substantial evidence that the fate of juveniles is critical and represents in many instances the driving factor for amphibian population dynamics... p 254
• The Gibbs & Shriver (2005) population model used by HTH takes into account juvenile survival rate. HTH used a hypothetical rate of 0.6 in their 2019 model. But it doesn't look like they're measuring the newts they're studying, so how will they differentiate juveniles from adults to come up with more than a hypothetical survival rate for juveniles?

New and undescribed species of Moths can be found here:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=grid&taxon_id=47157&verifiable=any&field:New%20species%20reference%20and%20name=

The field "New species reference and name:" contains the names of undescribed species as per the Lepimap catalogue. These will be updated when described.

Details of the field can be found here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/8546 - taxa can be filtered by the next highest rank, e.g. Genus or Family. For instance: Ceromitia
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?captive=any&place_id=any&project_id=19375&subview=grid&taxon_id=556995&verifiable=any
For specific species use the following format. For instance: Syngamia sp. 1
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:New%20species%20reference%20and%20name=Syngamia%20sp.%201

Identifications
Please help with identifications. The most urgent identications are:

• Observations Identified only at Order level:
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual%2Cresearch&verifiable=any&project_id=moths-of-eswatini&lrank=order&place_id=any

• Observations Identified only at Familylevel (add your family if you want to focus):
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual%2Cresearch&verifiable=any&project_id=moths-of-eswatini&lrank=family&place_id=any

Decided to focus on the steep embankment on the South side of Old Five Mile Road (the two parcels hi-lighted in green below).

The few feet of berm along Old Five Mile is cleaned up very regularly by dedicated volunteers. It is more difficult to clean the embankment on the South side of Old Five Mile. This is partially because it's fairly steep. It also suffers from very dense tangles of honeysuckle. It's a battle just getting to the garbage in order to pick it up. The picture below shows what is typical. Several bottles inside a tangle of honeysuckle on a steep embankment. It would be much easier to keep this cleaned up if State, County, or Township volunteers could keep the area cleared of honeysuckle. It would also make the greenspace and the gateway into Anderson Township much more inviting.

Some of the items found inside the tangle of honeysuckle suggest just how long its been since anyone made it in to clean things up. This is not to suggest that all vegetation should be removed from the embankment. Black Locust, Eastern Red Cedar, Box Elder, Ash and Sugar Maple trees were all observed growing on the embankment. Keeping control of the honeysuckle would become easier over time if these trees are encouraged to develop into a more mature canopy that helps to shade out future honeysuckle. It'd be easier to clean up the garbage in an open forest as opposed to a jungle of honeysuckle.

Ein Projekt für 2021.

17.02.2021: Nordwest-Ecke, 2 "Beete" und ein Stück Weiher-Ufer:
"Beet" 1: Baumhasel, 2* Kornellkirsche, 1* vermutlich Prunus cerasifera, aber da fehlt mir noch ein brauchbares Habitus-Foto, daher noch nicht hochgeladen.
"Beet" 2: Blutbuche, 2* Platane, Robinie.
Uferstück: Rosskastanie, 3* Ginkgo (davon mind. 2 weiblich, mit alten Früchten), Gruppe von Metasequoia (nicht Lärchen, wie ich erst dachte).
Nebenbei 2 Vogelarten am Weiher: Kormoran und Stockente

It's always exciting when I am (or might be) wrong

That's when I learn! And, occasionally, when my species count goes up :)

People are typically very nice about it

They don't criticize and often acknowledge that they, too, are learning. I think people who like nature are mostly just like that. Of course, nature is good for us and inaturalist encourages courtesy. With the discussions we get into, some folks are starting to feel like friends I've never met (@wetlandfan, @elytrid, @greenscenery...).

They may or may not explain their reasoning

But, I stop and realize that some of these folks are doing massive numbers of IDs and being asked to render final opinions when other experts are puzzling. That's a lot of work and time.

But when they do, it's Awesome

When folks take time to educate me, I really appreciate it! With apologies to those I left out, here are a few (in no particular order):

• @susnyder, @hobiecat, @d_kluza and @d2b are educating me on butterflies, with @k8thegr8 specializing in caterpillars
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67642957
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67977342
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/63294773

• @jimlem , @sallypsandpiper, @malisaspring, @joshualincoln and the Ohio Odonata Survey folks were tireless , correcting (or confirming) all 902 observations which I submitted in about a 2-month time frame - while a gazillion other people were pounding in observations too!
  https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ohio-dragonfly-survey-ohio-odonata-survey

• @nomolosx is the kindly king of all things hopper; if he doesn't know, he has a network of experts like @hopperdude215
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/64419708

• @trinaroberts and @edanko haven't given up on teaching me about Syrphidae yet :)
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67977332
  https://sites.google.com/view/flyguide/northeast/syrphidae-northeast

• @heatherholm, @susanna_h, @tachysphex, @seins, @raycama and @matthias22 are helping me learn wasps
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68167501
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67921090
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/66724571

• @madbiologist18 takes time to explain ants (and quite a few other things, but he does seem to really like the ants)
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/65312731
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/64996770

• @jgw_atx has provided encouragement and ID resources for those 8-legged critters:
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68254102
  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/62698875

Nov. 2108: Took possession of 6.7 acres on site of old Fall Creek School, with vestiges evident around the homesite. A dozen or so mature Garry oaks (Quercus garryana) are on the place, including the iconic one at entrance: 6 ft. DBH, canopy as broad as high, probably pre-settlement age. Outside mowed area around house, ground covered in invasive alien shrub species, particularly Crataegus monogyna and Rubus bifrons; and at least 47 (by eventual count) other introduced graminoids, forbs and woody species. I was astonished to find that despite all the weeds, at least 114 (by eventual count) native plant species are extant, in some cases as single individuals. Fragaria virginiana ssp. platypetala is dominant throughout. Camassia quamash ssp. maxima and C. leichtlinii ssp. suksdorfii are both abundant, as are Brodiaea elegans ssp. hooveri, Potentilla gracilis var. gracilis, Prunella vulgaris ssp. lanceolata and Sidalcea malviflora ssp. virgata. There is a diverse Carex component. And so forth: See project lists.

Not long after I moved in, my near, dear neighbor Tanya Harvey suggested I contact the Restoration Projects Manager for the Middle Fork Willamette Watershed Council, one Audrey Squires. Audrey secured a $11,300 grant to restoring a "legacy oak" site. Starting in July 2019, Audrey's contractor Rosario Franco of Aumsville used a brush masticator on a bobcat, to grind the woody invasives down flat, while his crew sprayed the larger stumps with triclopyr choline, as Vastlan. That left a lot of woody debris in all size classes on the ground, albeit mostly flat and easily traversed. He and his crew returned four more times to broadcast-apply generic clopyralid and clethodim. I paid for one more broadcast application of fluazifop-p-butyl, as Fusilade DX, by Glass Tree Care and Spray Service of Eugene after the grant money ran out. The results of all that treatment is that I don't have n immediate problem with most weeds in the Asteraceae, Fabaceae or Poaceae, and some of the natives in those families appear to have survived. There are still areas dense with weeds not sensitive to clopyralid, however.

In October 2020, I spot-sprayed in the 'oak patch' with either glyphosate or triclopyr, trying to preserve native sedges especially, while not risking the oaks. Six weeks later, I used a belly-grinder to seed about an acre under the oaks; and also the spring-seep in the northern rocky 'bank' between the upper and lower meadows (a spot already rich in showy natives), with a mix of grasses and perennial and annual forbs I bought from Lynda Boyer, "The Prairie Godmother of the Willamette Valley". The mix contains Danthonia californica, which requires 12 weeks of winter stratification to germinate.

Since then, I've spot-sprayed the southern bank with glyphosate or triclopyr, prior to seeding with a mix containing only small-seeded grasses. FWIW, that brings this brief summary up to Jan. 18, 2021. I can't promise frequent updates!

Hi everyone!

I was lucky enough to sit and watch a Barred Owl yesterday resting (cautiously) for about 30 minutes yesterday! I have a photo of them, and am wondering about posting owl sightings and locations on iNaturalist.

In the past I have heard of efforts to not share owl locations as to help support them to stay private without too many people coming to look for them. I'm wondering if that is a specific practice for certain owls and not others, and if any of you have any thoughts or practices around this.

Thanks for your help!
Hannah

I was under the impression that all herons migrated from Northeast but I guess not every kind?
I have seen two but too far away to see what kind they were. I think Great Blue. However, the two main rookeries , here, have already gone on.

A lot of good people on here would be reluctant to ID mushrooms because of the way we learn them, species by species. It can be very daunting to build the family architecture to understand them better. I'm a pretty good identifier, but still mostly average at the Family or Genus level. I was incorrigible about learning from picture matching when I started, and, like almost everyone else, I just wanted to learn if something was edible or if it could make you happy. Now, and thanks to people wanting to know how I know what something is, I've started asking myself why more. My first NAMA foray at Clarion, PA, near my home on the Allegheny Plateau, I was lucky enough to have befriended quite a few good mycologists who didn't hate me for those traits. They all told me what I knew to be true, that I needed to learn to use the keys more. Well, they told me that and that I'd probably never get really good at mushrooms unless I was hooked up with the big city clubs. I ignored the latter advice for a little while longer, but I did try to tackle the keys more. It wasn't until later, after learning many Generic concepts, and interacting with some of my new found now-cyber-friends that I decided to immerse myself in the phylogeny. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. While we may live in drier, hotter times, the knowledge is in the flood stages. There are just are so many new things out there. If you've been around mycologists, or botanists, you are familiar with lumpers and splitters. Well DNA has finally made splitters out of most of us. The only splitters that would have been embarrassed by DNA are way too long-dead to feel that way.

I think this is one of the blocks to getting more good people into making identifications on here. We get on a roll identifying, but we get curious by some new-to-us name or something else that's on our mind we've been trying to know better, and then get sucked down the science rabbit hole. I try to separate the two, but it is impossible. That is a huge issue as there aren't that many identifiers for Fungi compared to other organisms. With nearly 8 million observations, there is a little bit more than twice the amount of observations of birds than there are of mushrooms on here. You can look at the other stats here

Expore Page-Fungi Identifiers. This shows that while the amount of identifiers is fairly similar, that the number one identifier of Fungi would be in the top five of bird identifiers, the number 2 would be number 17, and the number 3 would be 46. The 250th and the 500th birder has seven times the amount of identifications as their counterpart in mushroom land.

Identifying mushrooms should be always couched by the fact that there is so much unknown and only so much that humans are capable of (even sitting behind these wonder machines). I don't think we should hesitate to give a species' names out if we might have heard from someone that the thing we are trying to identify has been separated by DNA into multiple species. It might be years to publishing if it is even being worked on. I will often give the best currently available information. Like with Hygrophoropsis, it might be more than one species here and we really don't know. The false chanterelle could just be one of the false chanterelles, well it always was one of the false chanterelles, but I digress. The same thing could be said for a number of common things we find. I favor a top-down approach is favored for this. Just call it Hygrophoropsis, but I will sometimes agree with the other. This doesn't work sometimes though. Like when the genera have been split as well.

As an identifier, one of the things that endear me to people (and I really try hard to not play favorites) is trying to identify Fungi on here, for others. It may not feel like a lot, but start out by learning the classes and their traits. Move things from Unknown, Life, or Fungi, into a Class or even a Phyllum eliminates thousands of possibilities for the users. Even the most casual of new users get a boost from this interaction. They have a Wikipedia page to look up the thing they didn't know anything about, or they may have some validation for being on the right track. Sure they could go to Facebook and have a bunch of people they don't know give them five different names and maybe three different PM's. Here you might get an average ID out of the AI and have to wait and see if someone comes along to put it right or verify it, but the AI is better than many of those identifiers already, and the identifiers here have stats at least to tell you who they are (to some extent). Like their awful Facebook cousin, who shouts out a garbage species ID and hopes they aren't chastised for it, the identifier now has a stake in the process and can see it unfold. Identifying shows me, a more seasoned identifier, that this person is hungry for the information I may have for them, and it is more likely they will learn from it and pass it on, plus it gives me a sense of purpose other than beating the site statistics. It makes me happy to see it. Try to identify, it might be for you. Most importantly, don't forget, don't be afraid to get things wrong.

There are some other things that can be done from the identification standpoint, like cleaning up some of the AI's prolific mistakes. I mean really AI, you can suggest species for things all the time just by picture matching, but I'm supposed to be looking through a microscope at things and reading all the pre-prints to know mushrooms before I'm allowed to even put a Family to something? Really?

Over the past couple weeks I happened to get a couple decent in-flight photos of two species of hawk very difficult to distinguish: Sharp-shinned Hawk and Cooper's Hawk. The first photo is a Sharp-shinned Hawk I photographed flying over Nalle Bunny Run Wildlife Preserve on 1/9/2021. The second is a Cooper's Hawk flying over Lake Creek Trail in northwest Austin on 1/16/2021. The main differences these photos show are the angle of the wings and size of the heads. The Sharp-shinned often holds its wings pitched just a little bit forward and has a smaller head, protruding out in front of the wings less. The Cooper's usually has wings held more straightly out to the sides and has a larger head protruding out in front of the wings more.

So why are these two species so similar?

I can only speculate. They have similar ecological niches, both specializing in hunting other birds in the woods. So they both have broad, rounded wings and long tails. Why such similar plumage? They may have also had a common ancestor, and speciated as two different populations found slightly different specialization.

E. hyemale ssp./var. affine = E. praealtum*,
North America, Mexico, Central America in Guatemala.
E. hyemale ssp./var. hyemale = E. hyemale,
Europe and Asia to northwestern China in Xinjiang.

The two subspecies differ morphologically in height, stem colour
and width and numbers of ridges on the sheath teeth.

*E. praealtum may be treated as a separate species. [Christenhusz et al. 2019]
However, if one prefers to keep this taxon as a subspecies, the correct name
would be E. hyemale subsp. affine.

According to Denis Gallant, at the Mississippi Valley Field Naturalists, the bobcat trail camera picture taken on Jan. 6th 2021 is the first record with photo evidence on iNaturalist in Lanark County.

The Thaumatoperla species are a unique and iconic group found in the Victorian alpine areas of Australia. While they stand out in their beauty there are actually very few records of them. We are endeavouring to change this. There are four Thaumatoperla species currently described, all from individual alpine areas. The adults are flightless which means their dispersal ability is limited. The four species occur in the Bogong High Plains area, the Mt Baw Baw to Yarra Ranges area, Mount Buller-Mount Stirling and, also the Mount Wellington area. The adults emerge through February to May, depending on the area you are in. If any keen observers are around alpine waterways, please keep an eye out!

Matteo Poda, ci segnala la presenza di un gufo reale (Bubo bubo) sulla collina est di Trento

Durante il periodo invernale, i maschi emettono un profondo canto bitonale, udibile specialmente nelle prime ore di buio. I lunghi filari tra le vigne rappresentano un importante terreno di caccia, offrendo probabilmente anche posatoi strategici da cui i maschi possono lanciare il loro richiamo durante il periodo riproduttivo.

A huge congratulations to all participants in our Creepy Crawlies Count! Despite some rainy weather, we managed to log over 700 observations* of hundreds of different species* over the weekend, showcasing just how much diversity we can access even in a lockdown. To put these numbers in perspective, this weekend contributed about 10% of the total arthropod observations recorded on iNaturalist in Zimbabwe. We logged more spiders than were uploaded in the decade from 2008 to 2018!

A highlight for me was seeing over 100 observations from the 9 or 10 participants who joined iNaturalist in 2021. Special mention to @nick-de-swardt who managed to observe 17 chafer species in a single tree, including some extremely interesting specimens! I hope all of these naturalists had a great time and we look forward to their future finds.

@moira_fitzpatrick topped the leaderboard with an incredible 228 observations! We remain in awe of the hard work she continually puts in to push back the boundaries of our knowledge.

Thank you to all who participated. Wishing you and your garden companions a happy 2021 :)

*We will wait a few weeks for observations and identifications to settle before we can calculate the 'final' figures, at which point I might send out a quick stats breakdown and/or a video with some highlights

Fox squirrels are now common in the neighborhood. I have not done much hiking in the past year due to the crowds on the trails due to the pandemic and population boom. It will be interesting to see if they have expanded their range in the mountains.

https://nhmu.utah.edu/blog/foxSquirrel

Comme l'année 2021 commence encore avec des restrictions de sorties et de voyages liées à la crise sanitaire, je me replonge dans mes archives photographiques de ces 10 dernières années à la recherche d'espèces observées par le passé. Vous voyez donc apparaître en se moment des photos de 2012. Mais l'horizon s'élargit.