Diario del proyecto Manitoba Nature

Its almost here - the annual global bioblitz to celebrate Earth Week. You can join in by simply adding observations of nature from the spaces where you live, work and play.

Its a great time to invite a friend along to introduce them to using iNaturalist - and with two sets of eyes searching you will likely find even more things to observe.

The weekend weather looks a bit up and down with some wet patches - so dress up warm and dry. At least we won't need to worry too much about woodticks with these temperatures. :)

Looking forward to share with you what we find and anticipating with pleasure your discoveries!

Spring is a good time to find galls. While the leaves are still not yet out, it is easier to see those galls that persist through the winter.

Galls are plant deformities caused by other organisms. The plant host responds to chemical secretions from the organism to build uniquely shaped structures that always benefit the gall inducer and sometimes also benefit the host.

Gall inducers can frequently be identified simply by the shape and placement of the gall plus the identity of the plant hosting the gall. Gall inducers specialize in specific groups of plants or sometimes even a single species.

Observers can use the 'Host Plant ID' observation field to add their identification of the plant host to their observation of the gall. If the id is one of the gall former species or even just the family that gall formers belong to, you have the option to choose 'Gall' under Evidence of Organism.

Many gall structure are quite small so you will need to get up close and personal to find them. Collect images of the general location and appearance of the plant deformity and then zoom in to show the specific shape and texture of the tiny structure. A single tree may have multiple different galls on its leaves and branches. Its neighbour may have still other species to find. Soon you will know where to look for species in our area and recognizing when you have discovered something new and exciting.

The Gall Week April 2024 project (https://inaturalist.ca/projects/gall-week-april-2024-event ) is a traditional projects. You will need to join the project first then add your gall observations manually.

The last few days of Gall week overlap with the first three days of this years City Nature Challenge. Check out what going on with at this link. https://inaturalist.ca/observations?project_id=182602

Happy gall hunting!

Winter is a great time to improve your birding skills. There are far fewer types of birds around AND there is less vegetation for them to hide in. There are also tried and true birding strategies for keeping observing birds fresh through the darker days.

Winter Bird Feeders

A bird feeder set up near a window that you look out regularly keeps you warm while providing opportunity to observe the same birds over and over. Familiarity breeds expertise. It also can mean the discovery of a winter rarity - a bird that has elected to tough it out or one that has wandered in from far away. Audubon has a helpful leaflet on bird feeders to get you started. In Manitoba, it is not necessary to offer water in the winter as most feeder birds get enough moisture from snow. Remember that if you share your space with bears, you will need to put away your feeder BEFORE they become active in the spring.

Keep A List

Finding a bird deserves the recognition that adding it to a list can provide. Of course adding your observation to iNat is a great way to update your list. While iNaturalist is expanding every day, there are still gaps in our knowledge of birds. Common birds are sometimes overlooked. Weather and distance can suppress the number of observations of a species in some areas. Using a known target list together with the iNat observation map view can help you fill in some of the gaps and improve your knowledge of Manitoba birds at the same time.

The annual MB Birds winter bird list uses a variety of more traditional birding sources like the MB Birds emails, the various Christmas Bird Counts held in Manitoba and eBird sightings as well as checking what has been posted on iNaturalist and on Facebook birding groups. The list grows quickly in the first few days as the familiar winter birds are added. After one day 38 species have been recorded on this years list with the number expected to grow again substantially by tomorrow. Historically over a hundred species have been recorded in Manitoba December through February. Have you seen them all?

Ready for a bigger listing challenge next year? Consider taking on a route in the Canadian Nightjar Survey. The survey takes place mid June thru mid July and observers only need to be able to recognize two different birds - the Common Nighthawk and the Eastern Whip-poor-will. Look for a route close to where you will be at that time of year as the survey takes place at dusk. I have found the coordinators very helpful and the survey is pretty interesting to do. We were pretty excited to hear our first whip-poor-will call. :)

Share your joy

Let people you know about your iNaturalist experience and invite them to join in. It doesn't matter how near or far they might be, you can share in their nature discoveries through iNat. And if you happen to be taking a winter break somewhere, suss out the location before you go to see what great new organisms, including birds, you might be able to add to your life list.

Christmas Bird Counts are held across North America during December continuing a tradition begun in 1900. To find a count in Canada near you, check out this Birds Canada page. Have some junior birders or kids who just like birds then check out the Christmas Bird Count for Kids.

Take in outings and presentations by groups like Nature Manitoba, Westman Naturalists, CPAWS Nature Club and Manitoba Provincial Parks.

Get outside

This is the root, the touchstone of everything else. Taking time to be outside and paying attention to the natural world refreshes ..even if that refreshment requires you to be bundled up to your eyeballs.

Birds like to hunker down in the shelter of the trees on windy cold days. They are more active during sunny breaks and the warm spells. Birds that like water know all the places where the creeks and rivers never freeze. When you are searching for a particular species, a bit of research can help you refine where and when you look to increase your chances for finding them. Look for previous observations on iNat during the month and area. Check out the surroundings visible in the images for hints on where in the landscape to focus your search.

Happy observing! Looking forward to seeing what we all find.

Red Osier Dogwood - Cornus sericea could use a bit of help on the identification side. At the moment only 60% of all verifiable dogwood observations in Manitoba have made it to Research Grade. Here's some strategies to help decide if you agree with an existing dogwood id in Manitoba.

First a bit of a quick sketch - red osier dogwood is a shrub - a woody plant that has many stems instead of a single trunk. It is generally no taller than an adult person and grows closely surrounded by other shrubs.

Mostly it has red bark. To get a feel for what the dogwood's red bark looks like, you can filter the Manitoba RG observations of red osier dogwood so that you are only looking at the leafless twigs - November to April.

Most other Manitoba shrubs don't have red bark-and the ones that do do not have those little gray warty spots. Only red osier dogwood has them and they are most distinct on the older branches. Red osier dogwood also never has thorns or spines.

You can see the red bark in the summer observations as well but leaves may obscure your view of the bark. That's ok as they have their own very distinctive character in the vein pattern, the strong lines that run outward from the center of the leaf. All dogwoods share the same veining pattern, where the nearly parallel secondary veins branch from the midvein and curve towards the tip as they near the leaf edge.

Red osier dogwood flowers mainly in early summer. The flowers are held above the leaves in a flat topped cluster. Each little flower has only 4 pointed petals. (When you are observing a dogwood in flower yourself, take some time to see if you can collect some observations for the insect experts as well )

The fruits start appearing in mid summer, green at first then ripening to white.

These few field characters will be enough help confirm most red osier dogwood ids through the seasons - red bark with grey warty protrusions, leaves with curving parallel veins, clusters of white 4 petal flowers and berries that are white when ripe.

Have fun!

Feel free to ping me if you want me to chime in on a dogwood id

ps check out these other organisms found living in and on red osier dogwood in Manitoba
leaf miners and leaf galls
other insects

The first set of observations in Manitoba were added on Feb 11, 2011 when Bob Dodge uploaded 3 observations of polar bears that he had seen on a visit to Churchill in October 1995.
(https://inaturalist.ca/observations?created_on=2011-02-11&place_id=7590&subview=table&verifiable=any)

Twelve years later, let's take a look at what we have so far....

The earliest Manitoba observation to date is from Jun 5, 1928, a Tetracis crocallata Yellow Slant-Line collected from McCreary MB by A.V. Harper (https://inaturalist.ca/observations/38132107) This specimen was uploaded as part of project to digitize the Grand Canyon Museum Collection The collector was probably Vern Harper, one of three American entomologists who favored a gravel ridge near McCreary as a collecting area. https://archive.org/details/journaloflepid282919lepi/page/n113/mode/2up

Coverage through the seasons and across the province is steadily growing with the collection of observations. Today there are over 250,000 observations of nearly 7,000 species of which approximately one half have been identified to species. Total observations is seventh overall among the Canadian provinces and territories.

Species percentages by large group are pretty close to those across Canada: insects 46.9% (44.7%), plants 31.2% (25.1%), fungi 10.0% (16.5%), birds 5.5% (5.7%), and all other animals 6.4% (8%).

The top five observed and identified organisms in Manitoba are White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus), Canada Goose (Branta canadensis), Red Osier Dogwood (Cornus sericea), Canada Thistle, (Cirsium arvense), and Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa).

After spider week, Cal Coast week, and taco day, it is time for Gall Week! Let's start a new tradition, documenting galls on the first week of October.
https://inaturalist.ca/projects/gall-week-2021-9e58d299-60ec-4b10-af61-11ec0ab46974

We can see organisms shifting strategies as the days shorten and the temperatures drop. Many birds are moving steadily south. Amphibians are burying themselves in the mud. Plants are shifting into dormancy. Here's a new thing to try on your wanders out in nature.

Galls are plant deformities caused by other organisms. The plant host responds to chemical secretions from the organism to build uniquely shaped structures that always benefit the gall inducer and sometimes also benefit the host.

Gall inducers can frequently be identified just by the shape and placement of the gall and the identity of the plant hosting the gall. Gall inducers specialize in specific groups of plants or sometimes even a single species. Observers can use the 'Host Plant ID' observation field to add their identification of the plant host to their observation of the gall.

Many gall structure are quite small so you will need to get up close and personal to find them. Collect images of the general location and appearance of the plant deformity and then zoom in to show the specific shape and texture of the tiny structure. A single tree may have multiple different galls on its leaves and branches. Its neighbour may have still other species to find. Soon you will know where to look for species in our area and recognizing when you have discovered something new and exciting.

Gall-related projects generally are made as traditional projects so after you join them you will still have to add your gall observations manually. If you want to start observing galls immediately, you can add your gall observations to Galls of North America

More reading....

• Plants make galls to accommodate foreigners: some are friends, most are foes by Marion O. Harris, Andrea Pitzschke published in New Phytologist, 27 November 2019
• Confessions of a gall hunter by Ron Russo, published in Natural History, 2009/2010)
• Goldenrod Galls
• gallformers.org

One often sees other organisms when photographing up close and personal with big showy flowers like these. The Observation Field 'Plant that the organism was found on' will give you a lookup to add the name of the plant when you add the observation of your plant photo-bomber...

Yellow Ladyslipper Cypripedium calceolus

where to find them...
"dry to moist open ground, thickets and woods in the southern two thirds of the province" ¹
"moist woods, boreal forest" ²
"edges or open spaces in aspen poplar woods or upper margins of sloughs and ditches on roads and railway grades" ³
https://inaturalist.ca/observations?month=6&place_id=7590&subview=map&quality_grade=research&taxon_id=50713

pollinated by smaller species of bees;
https://goorchids.northamericanorchidcenter.org/species/cypripedium/parviflorum/

other organisms seen on this flower...

Canada Anemone (Meadow Anemone) Anemoneastrum canadense

previously known as Anemone canadense

where to find them...
"woods, thickets, meadows, shores and clearings throughout the southern three quarters of the province" ¹
"One of the commonest anemones; found in large patches at the edges of woodlands, low moist places and hollows." ²
"Common. Habitat includes moist grassy areas, scrubby areas, edges of aspen poplar groves, particularly in parkland-prairie, but the plant is distrbuted throughout the area in suitable locations" ³
https://inaturalist.ca/observations?month=6&place_id=7590&subview=map&quality_grade=research&taxon_id=881527

other organisms seen on this flower...

Northern Bedstraw Galium boreale

previously known as Galium septentrionale

where to find them...
"thickets, rock outcrops, prairie, shores and clearings throughout the province except for the extreme north" ¹
"Common; in openings in woodlands, along roadsides and moister places on prairies...In some years, almost the dominant roadside flower." ²
"Habitat includes the aspen poplar groves and associated scrub of the parkland region to where parkland and forest meet" ³
https://inaturalist.ca/observations?month=6&place_id=7590&subview=map&quality_grade=research&taxon_id=77188

The bedstraws are one of the larval food plants of the Bedstraw moth. These caterpillars also are willing to eat Fireweed and Evening primroses.
https://inaturalist.ca/observations?locale=en&place_id=7590&preferred_place_id=6712&taxon_id=118901

other organisms seen on this flower...

Sources

1. Scoggan, H.J., Flora of Manitoba, 1957 Ottawa
2. Budd, A.C., Budd's Flora of the Canadian Prairie Provinces
3. Vance, F.R., Jowsey, J.R. and McLean, J.S, Wildflowers Across the Prairies

No observations - nothing to identify. No identifications, no connection to what we think we already know. If you know the name, you can find out what else is known about it and what is left to find out.

Frustrating an observer's itch to know more can be a barrier, especially for new observers. Recent events aside, it has been easy to believe that the human knowledge has a pretty good handle on what is going on here on our planet. Sure in the tropics there might be some gaps - there are a lot of weird beetles there after all but here in Manitoba, we pretty much know everything there is to know, right? So it can be a little surprising for an observer to hear from an identifier that the problem is not the lack of focus in their image - or the need for some feature not visible in the observation - but that no one knows the species name of that one because we haven't gotten around to figuring it out yet.

Similar frustration awaits new identifiers used to identifying specimens separated in time and space from the moment of observation. Many keys are tailored towards identifying collected specimens using characters that do not change when an organism has been preserved. Some characters easily visible in a inert specimen in the hand can be impossible to discern in the a photograph or recording. It can also be a little disconcerting for an acknowledged expert to be challenged to explain their id when they may have been more used to a more deferential approach.

Both of these frustrations have a common root - observers and identifiers are exploring together the new opportunities that this tool offers to explore our understanding of nature. Already the identifier community is developing additional tools that depend on features visible in photographs of an organism. Observers are finding ways to improve their documentation of organisms based on the needs of identifiers. As observations are continuing to be added, the likelihood grows that someone somewhere will have added an observation of the organism that you can look at and compare with your own experience, whether you are an observer, an identifier or both.

Happy exploring!
Mary Krieger
St Andrews, MB

• iNaturalist Photo Guide Tips, tricks, and guides to help get your sightings identified
• Field/Photo ID for Flies
• Freshwater Turtles On the Road Again
• The Rediscovery of a Lost Fish on iNaturalist
• Bridging museum characters and field characters: a case study in Ghost Crabs

iNaturalist is being used by a growing number of Manitobans to connect with the natural world surrounding them - we can see this in the steady increase in observers and observations over the past few years. Just a few weeks ago we crossed that significant milestone of 100,000 observations The first City Nature Challenge in the Winnipeg region was part of that effort bringing in almost 2,500 observations in just 4 days.

One of the things that stand out the strongest for me after my 5 years using this platform is the way that it enables local experts to make substantial contributions. It connects what we each know about what we observe with all our knowledge about everything alive and that is kind of huge. This project is a way for me to support you all in learning more about nature in Manitoba by sharing what I know, what resources I have on my bookshelf and can find on the internet as well as help you to connect with each other. And I will be happy to share that role with any of you that would also like to offer your expertise.

Over on iNaturalist.org, it was noted that the whole extended iNaturalist global community has now managed to upload at least one Research Grade observation of one sixth of all named species It also sets out the following ideas to further support building the data set:

• Grow the number of observers overall, especially in remote areas
• Grow the number of observers of rare species
• Grow the number of specialist identifiers

Those ideas sound pretty doable to me - lets take a run at them together. The first challenge is to make this project a clearing house for knowledge about nature in Manitoba and those individuals and organizations that are involved in studying it. I will write journal posts on a regular basis - topic suggestions are always welcome - and invite people to join this project.

Looking forward to seeing what our collaboration will come up with.

Mary Krieger
St Andrews, Manitoba