Saturday was the Virginia BioBlitz, a state-wide event hosted by the Virginia Academy of Science to get people outside and talking photos of as many species as possible. They set an aggressive goal of 100,000 observations of 6,500 species. Educators, Master Naturalists and students from across the state met the challenge. By 5:30 yesterday, they had exceeded 111,000 observations of over 6,600 species. This morning, there are over 134,000 observations of 6,906 species by 313 observers. Michelle Prysby (our Virginia Master Naturalist Director) and Kal Ivanov (Entomologist from the Virginia Museum of Natural History) were speakers at the morning kickoff. Ken-ichi Ueda, one of the co-founders of iNaturalist, spoke at the 11 AM session. In all, the event was very well organized and I had a great time wandering the property with my camera.
If you missed the fun, do not despair! Turns out, this project will be on-going. You may participate at any time! Sign up for the Virginia BioBlitz project on iNaturalist and record anything interesting you come across. The objective is to document the biodiversity of Virginia, so one shot of each species is all they need. Please do not include pets or people.
Here are a few of my postings. If anyone else has any to share, just let me know!
Photo by Kathy Fell: Red breasted grosbeak (Pheucticus lodovicianus) looking for seeds
Photo by Kathy Fell: Eastern Fence Lizard (Sceloporus undulatus)
Photo by Kathy Fell: Dogwood (Cornus florida) berries
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