CNCYXE2022 – Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area. George Genereux Urban Regional Park.

Day 3 of the City Nature Challenge Begins

A great Sunday, and a day that also promises great weather.

So it appears that we could be on the search for White-breasted Nuthatches, grouse and partridges, which would be keen for Sunday!

Sorry about the beavers post yesterday. They seem to be still under ice on any small creeks so that won’t work.

There have been other “birds of prey” sighted such as Cooper’s Hawk, Rough-legged Hawk, Peregrine Falcon and Sharp-Shinned Hawk which is pretty amazing!

Mosses are making a feature, as are those bracket or shelf fungi on the sides of trees. Sometimes these polypores on the trees are also called conks, and are an exciting find. Remember to peek at the rocks and trees you pass by for bright orange or green lichen!

Haven’t tried scooping any wetlands water yet! Has anyone ventured carefully close to the edge of a marsh to see if there is any larva or insects in the water?

Has anyone tried putting up a white sheet at night with a UV light to see if there are any moths attracted to the light? There are moths already this early in the spring!

There are some interesting insects out there if you smoosh around the leaves, or lift up a rock or small log. This might need a partner as the insects scurry away to get into cover again!

Well anyways, have a great Sunday, enjoy nature, and remember, International Dawn Chorus Day is the first Sunday of May! And it is sweet that iNaturalist loves to have the songs of songbirds recorded as a new feature! Take care out there. There is today and tomorrow yet to record nature for the City Nature Challenge. There is a bioblitz at Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area today at 2:00 pm with Little John’s installed nearby in the parking lot for your convenience and will remain until end of working day tomorrow. Tomorrow there is a bioblitz out at the new and improved George Genereux Urban Regional Park at 7:00 pm, come out of curiosity!

Breaking News!

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Share for Nature

FriendsAreas.ca

City Nature Challenge 2022

CNC YXE 2022 DNU – City Nature Challenge https://bit.ly/381g29B

BioSmart Saskatoon City nature Challenge CNCYXE https://bit.ly/3vUs3Ga

Celebrate 50 years! Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional park were planted to trees in 1972, 50 years ago. Come out and say Happy Birthday!

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Please help protect / enhance your afforestation areas, please contact the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc. (e-mail / e-transfers )Support the afforestation areas with your donation or membership ($20.00/year). Please donate by paypal or by using e-transfers Please and thank you! Your donation and membership is greatly appreciated. Members e-mail your contact information to be kept up to date!

Donations can be made through Paypal, Canada Helps, Contact Donate A Car Canada, SARCAN Drop & Go 106100594 for the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Use the UN Decade’s Visual Identity
Make it your own
Spread the word about the UN Decade
Let’s Bring Back Forests
Let’s Green Our Cities

“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven..”
Richard St. Barbe Baker

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Focusing on wild PLANTS

City Nature Challenge ID Party FOCUS ON PLANTS! Wed, May 4, 2022 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM CST

“Plants and flowers taught me how to grow, by growing in secret and in silence.”
Michael Bassey Johnson.

So, at this virtual Zoom identification party, we will discover the exciting world of identifications using iNaturalist. Plants will be the focus, and if anyone has a plant related question, now would be the time to bring it forward. We are mainly focusing in on native or wild plants, and not cultivated plants for the garden or flower bed.

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
E. O. Wilson

The City Nature Challenge happens April 29 – May 2, and it is so exciting to have so many interested people in the CNCYXE2022! Thanks for downloading the iNaturalist app, doing some experimental observations, and looking outside in nature for wildlife. It can be any wild plant, insects, mushrooms, animal, fungi, or any other evidence of life (shells, scat, fur, tracks, feathers, nests) found in your neighborhood, home, backyard, or even through your windows. You might be surprised by how many insects thrive in the nooks and crannies around you. There are also some group meets planned as well to take advantage of.

Bumblebee on dandelion — Pollinator on dandelion

Thermopsis rhombifolia flowers - Buffalo Bean Nadiatalent CCx4 — Pollinator on dandelion

Celebrate 50 years! Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional park were planted to trees in 1972, 50 years ago. Come out and say Happy Birthday!

YouTube

Donations can be made through Paypal, Canada Helps, Contact Donate A Car Canada, SARCAN Drop & Go 106100594 for the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Use the UN Decade’s Visual Identity
Make it your own
Spread the word about the UN Decade
Let’s Bring Back Forests
Let’s Green Our Cities

“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven..”
Richard St. Barbe Baker

Focus on Fungi, Conks, and Lichen

City Nature Challenge I.D. Party Fungi and Lichen Thu, May 5, 2022 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM CST

Get together virtually in attendance specialists from the Saskatchewan Mycological Working Group to help with I.D.s on Fungi including Lichen

We’ll start off with an introduction on how to make identifications using iNaturalist and will go through some observations together, so join in if you’d like to learn more about how to help with IDs! After that, folks can jump off if they’d like to work on IDs on their own, but we’ll stick around if people would like to share some of the observations they’re coming across or just want to chat more about the City Nature Challenge, fungi, lichen, conks in general. Maybe you have a poser, or a puzzler and you would like some help with something you saw when you were outside.

Did you know that…

“iNaturalist began in 2008 as a UC Berkeley School of Information Master’s final project of Nate Agrin, Jessica Kline, and Ken-ichi Ueda. Nate Agrin and Ken-ichi Ueda continued work on the site with Sean McGregor, a web developer. In 2011, Ueda began collaboration with Scott Loarie, a research fellow at Stanford University and lecturer at UC Berkeley. Ueda and Loarie are the current co-directors of iNaturalist.org.The organization merged with the California Academy of Sciences on April 24, 2014. In 2017, iNaturalist became a joint initiative between the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.

Since 2012, the number of participants and observations has roughly doubled each year.In 2014, iNaturalist reached 1 million observations and as of December 2021 there were 99 million observations.”

So here we are, now in Saskatoon, adding our plants, fungi, conks, lichen, animals, insects to iNaturalist so specialist scientists can look at our local data to make decisions to save species at risk, and to control invasive species, and to see how climate change is affecting the planet with range expansions and contractions. Thanks for taking part in the City Nature Challenge April 29 – May 2 by downloading iNaturalist, and taking picture of wildlife!

There is also a City nature Challenge Hints and Tips workshop on lichens and tree conks on Mon, April 25, 2022 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM CST featuring the Saskatchewan Mycological Working Group which may help out also

Celebrate 50 years! Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional park were planted to trees in 1972, 50 years ago. Come out and say Happy Birthday!

YouTube

Donations can be made through Paypal, Canada Helps, Contact Donate A Car Canada, SARCAN Drop & Go 106100594 for the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Use the UN Decade’s Visual Identity
Make it your own
Spread the word about the UN Decade
Let’s Bring Back Forests
Let’s Green Our Cities

“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven..”
Richard St. Barbe Baker

George Genereux Park – Connect with Nature

Here’s a great opportunity for you, your family and your friends to connect with nature while taking part in an international event designed to track biodiversity.

The Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas are hosting an event on Fri., 29 April 2022 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Central Standard Time at George Genereux Urban Regional Park Range Road 3063 Saskatoon, SK S0K 1V0

The City Nature Challenge (CNC) is an annual event run by the Community Science teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Since launching in 2016, the CNC has grown into an international event that inspires people around the world to find and document wildlife and birds (flora and fauna) in their cities. Last year over 419 cities in 44 countries participated, including 26 Canadian cities from coast to coast. The Canadian Wildlife Federation hosts the Canada wide City Nature Challenge, and the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Area hosts the Saskatoon area City Nature Challenge. It’s a friendly challenge to see which city can gather the most observations of nature, find the most species, and engage the most people. Last year participants tracked over 1 million observations!

The CNC is a fun, simple, and family-friendly event that’s easy to execute and can easily fit within public health guidelines. Using the free downloadable app found at iNaturalist.ca, people can search for and document their local biodiversity simply by taking pictures and uploading them through the app or online. It’s a wonderful way to get local area residents involved in a “citizen science” event that contributes to an international database of biodiversity.

The CNC 2022 event takes place April 29 – May 2, and we would welcome involvement from you, your friends, your family. Anyone can participate in the CNC, and inspiring people to explore local green spaces and natural habitats has added benefits, including developing a record of local wildlife or finding invasive species. If you are sitting at a baseball game outside, and see a fly flittering by, take a photo of it with iNaturalist loaded on your camera. If you see a ladybug wandering past as you sit at a soccer game, take a photo of it with the iNaturalist app. As you are walking your puppy dog, and your pet sniffs a beetle, take a picture with the iNaturalist app, there are so many opportunities!

Your involvement will also showcase Saskatoon’s commitment to biodiversity and conservation.

iNaturalist Connect with nature for the City Nature Challenge Saskatoon and Area Défi nature urbaine hosted by the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

iNaturalist Observation with smart phone connecting with nature, supporting vital conservation research worldwide. — iNaturalist Connect with nature for the City Nature Challenge Saskatoon and Area Défi nature urbaine hosted by the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

Celebrate 50 years! Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional park were planted to trees in 1972, 50 years ago. Come out and say Happy Birthday!

YouTube

Donations can be made through Paypal, Canada Helps, Contact Donate A Car Canada, SARCAN Drop & Go 106100594 for the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Use the UN Decade’s Visual Identity
Make it your own
Spread the word about the UN Decade
Let’s Bring Back Forests
Let’s Green Our Cities

“Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause. Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward. Bend to the winds of heaven..”
Richard St. Barbe Baker

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