Ashland Biodiversity iNaturalist Project Winner of the Month!

Delaware Nature Society started the summer iNaturalist contest on June 1 to encourage folks to visit Ashland Nature Center and use the iNaturalist app or website to record their observations. These observations are automatically pulled into the Ashland Nature Center Biodiversity iNaturalist project, where we catalogue plants and animals that observers report.

Congratulations to the August winner: David Shultz (iNaturalist userid: david3858); with10 observations of 10 species. As the winner, David will receive an Ashland Nature Center baseball hat.

David had several favorite pictures of the species he observed in August. The ones below are of the first observations of a Difoliated Orbweaver at Ashland Nature Center recorded on iNaturalist.

The picture below shows the observers that submitted observations in August. The observations submitted this August were fewer than those observations submitted for the same month in 2020 and 2019.

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During the month of August observers submitted:

  • 13 Insect observations
  • 13 Plant observations
  • 2 Arachnid observations
  • 2 Reptile observations
  • 1 Bird observation
  • 1 Mammal observation
  • 1 Mollusk observation

The 9 observers in August submitted the first iNaturalist observation at Ashland Nature Center of 8 individual species. This is exciting as it expands the knowledge of biodiversity at Ashland Nature Center.

Thank you to all observers that participated in August, and to all that participated during the contest this past summer. During the three months of the contest 31 observers submitted a total of 412 observations of 225 different species. David Brown, the winner of the July contest and the current Hawk Watch Coordinator at Ashland Nature Center, submitted the most observations at 112 of 95 different species.

Thank you to all the observers during June, July, and August. If you were not able to participate in the contest this summer consider getting out to visit Ashland Nature Center whenever you are able to and submit your observations to the Ashland Nature Center Biodiversity iNaturalist project. Your observations provide meaningful data to Ashland Nature Center so keep the observations coming.