Recap: This Week's EwA Insect & Pollinator Surveys (Fells + Somerville Growing Center)

[EwA]

Events > Plant Visitor Survey (Locations: Winchester, Somerville)

📸 Our favorite sighting of the week > This likely to be an Orange-legged drone fly on the right (no it's not a bee and it did not fool us either!) and recorded this time again at the Growing center (iNat record >)

It's getting colder in the morning, so further away from ideal conditions for bug watching. Then our next survey is likely to be closer to noon. We're going to do a few more abundance surveys and then we will stop those at the end of the month. But we'll keep doing the species occurrence surveys throughout October while the forest flowers and the native garden are still active.

Many of you helped and we thank you for that! Below are our session logs, and survey info. We'll be back in the field next week! (Check the EwA calendar). 

This week, we surveyed the following locations:

• Middlesex Fells Reservation (Winchester) > 09/11/19 session log

• Somerville Growing Center (Somerville) > 09/13/19 session log

About the recording tools/apps that we use:

• iNaturalist

• Caterpillars Count 

The easiest is to sign up (create an account) for each of these tools, and then record directly your observations when surveying in the field. Signing up is free and easy, and then once you have those profiles up and ready, we'll explain in the field how to record your observations. Very quickly you’ll be able to spot and identify with high accuracy. It’s true! (and it’s fun).

Survey documentation:

Some of you asked for our survey documentation, as well as wanted to know about the details of our protocol. 

All our documentation is publicly accessible and listed in the EwA Plant Survey Protocol > here.

And specifically here are the info sheets that we used in the field with you:  

• EwA Common Species Groups Info Sheet

• Teá’s Butterfly Info Sheet

Finally, a very cool virtual game (from the Caterpillars Count team) > Test your ability to find, identify and measure arthropods on virtual test branches. Race the clock as you play three increasingly difficult rounds, trying to locate and identify every arthropod on the page, and measure it correctly.  Points are awarded for accuracy - try to get as many points as you can! Game > https://caterpillarscount.unc.edu/virtualSurvey/

 

ⓘ More About EwA Citizen Science Program » https://tinyurl.com/ewa-citizen-science 

Thanks, - Claire