The oalley app is neat. I would say the results are fairly accurate for my area. Traffic jams are rare. Average speed in the city is likely about 40 km/h including stop sign and traffic lights. Highway traffic seems to average 10 km to 15 km over the speed limit. Highway 11’s limit is 100 km/h and other highways are 80 or 90 km/h.
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Visited all official trail systems within an hour?
Not quite, we have a LOT, but most. I actually have a spreadsheet of all trails in NE Alabama which is more like a 2 hour radius, and I only have maybe 15-20 trails left that I have not completed (and some of those, seen part of just not entire trail ie done part on a loop with other trails…my list is almost 150 trails long in total)
Visited all state parks/conservation areas/etc?
Definitely not. In my quarter of the state? yes. But you are talking 6+ hour drives for may of them, and I just don’t need to go that far when I have so much closer.
Attempted to find habitat variety?
Definitely, probably more than most being a caver, and I seek out unique / rare ones too for our area, like cedar glades. Your list I have seen all of, and more.
More than hiking?
Yes of course. I also kayak and cave and do rope work, so access to water directly, anything underground, and cliffs.
Geology maps?
See caver. By now I am part geologist haha. I also use high res LiDAR and slope overlays, and use historic satellite data. I can also tape/compass/inclometer survey, or use various disto devices. I do map cave systems, both the survey and cartography.
Soil maps?
Not so much. We have a lot of karst here. I have more interest in the MSS layer. Also, watersheds.
Different equipment?
Yes. I do work in karst entomology, so done things from various pitfall designs to sweep netting to pootering…and of course yes camera/photog work. I cannot see well in binoloculours or minoculars so I dont use them, that’s what a zoom lens is for.
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Well…parts of my metroplex are over an hour’s drive from me, but I haven’t even come close to visiting all the city parks/trail systems and similar within DFW. I spend a lot of time in a few spots (my street, there’s a green space with a river near my kid’s school that’s been good for birds and fish, etc). Some of my favorite spots are still pretty closed off due to COVID; the Trinity River Audobon is just now allowing people to visit on Friday and Saturday but only from 8am-noon.
I haven’t come close to visiting all state parks within an hour or two; we’ve been going to Purtis Creek State Park a lot but even that’s mostly been for swimming and picnicking so my kids can just have some fun. Hoping to step up hiking now that it’s cooling down. Planning on a trip to Dinosaur Valley/Meridian/Lake Whitney State Parks soon with my wife and kids. Going to try to make Hagerman NWR and Cleburne and Mineral Wells more soon.
As far as in city places…I like a few of them but some of them are so crowded it drives me crazy.
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I’ll define my “local area” as everything within a few kilometres from my house (i.e. within a half hour walk, plus or minus). It’s pretty diverse: I live in a fairly new neighbourhood (circa 2015); the main part of my town (a couple of kilometres north) dates back decades; there’s a new subdivision going in 100 m down my street (and several others within a 1 km walk); there are a (dwindling) number of “lifestyle” properties (< 1 ha) within a kilometre or so; to the south and west there are farms (some horticultural operations, others mixed sheep and cropping enterprises).
The more I think about it, the less of my local area have I explored. As far as the natural world goes, I’m most familiar with my immediate neighbourhood (the surrounding few blocks) and the playing fields just up the street (on account of my dog’s appetite for walks). But even then there’s heaps I haven’t really taken the time to get to know well. There are plenty of water races along the major roads in and around which are often cool surprises to be found. Last year I tried to map as many Iris pseudacorus in them as I could find. Lately I’ve mapped several populations of Azolla rubra in part of the main race through my subdivision, but I’d like to see how widely they’re distributed down the other end of the neighbourhood (no idea), or what other races nearby have them (some do; some don’t seem to). There’s a pond tiny wetland behind the old homestead in the middle of the playing fields that seems like it must be fed by a natural spring, associated with which are a number of species that are not commonly found elsewhere nearby (including some natives). I want to get a better handle on them. In the older part of town, there’s a network of green corridors between blocks of houses that I’ve never really walked through, but that might throw up some interesting finds.
Heck, I don’t even know my own street frontage well. I’ve been working from home for a while, and lately I’ve tried to pay more attention to the birds out the front of my house through the office window. The last couple of days I’ve observed a song thrush (Turdus philomelos) foraging in the nature strip. We’ve lived here for a few years, but I’ve never seen one on our property before.
There’s always something new to find, and always somewhere new to look!
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Because I am a rather lazy naturalist, “local” for me pretty much means my yard of less than an acre. I tend to let things come to me rather than to chase things down. Currently 2990 of my 4890 observations (1117 spp/1894 spp) have been made in my yard. Whenever there is a bioblitz like Canada153, my yard invariably provides more new species.
Thanks to having done Christmas bird, butterfly and odonata counts for years, I’ve covered the CBC circle that covers this area pretty well. Because I do field work in the area, I get to explore certain properties that are not open to the public. When I was geocaching a few years ago, I travelled local roads that I would not normally have travelled. Unfortunately, I wasn’t doing iNat then so it’s on my list to go back and explore those areas with camera in hand.
There’s still an awful lot to be seen out there but, these days, I’m having to be a bit stingy about the miles put on a car that is nearing the 400,000 km mark.
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Hmm, recently moved to a new neighbourhood, within a town bordering a city. I don’t drive, naturally that makes the area I can travel significantly smaller.
Despite this, there are a few small parks within my neighbourhood, I have been to only one thus far, if I remember correctly. Unfortunately there isn’t too much to see where I live, due to constant fogging for mosquitoes (somehow it kills all but the mosquitoes), but I have been blessed enough to see a frog, grasshoppers, moths and sparrows.
Now I look at the iNaturalist map, there are technically next to no observations where I live.
Maybe I should change that… haha
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That’s pretty much my approach to it. I am within an hour’s drive from 5 provincial parks and a bunch of conservation areas, etc. with lots to look at and lots of iNat observations but have concentrated my iNat observations, so far, on places with few observations and mostly close to home. It’s a different approach than I’ve taken over the years to life-list birding when I’ve jostled with mobs to see a Kirtland’s warbler. Not sure why this seems different. Maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten more anti-social as I’ve aged.
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It’s definitely not anti-social if you’re helping the community!
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Observing close to home is still observing after all. It also helps me, at least to be more aware of my surroundings. Who knows, maybe one of us would find something crazy enough to rival Toilet Weasel!
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It would take me years just to investigate all the wild (and not so wild) areas within just a mile in any direction of my house. I’m surrounded by lakes, ponds, bogs, fens, swamps, creeks, rivers, forests, etc., of which many are in hunting areas, or state or regional parks. I try to stay away from the more frequently used trails (of which we have many) and most often stay in the less traveled areas though I will investigate them too from time to time. If I had no vehicle to drive with I don’t think I’d run out of places to search for years to come just on foot but I look everywhere I go anyway. Who knows what I might find behind a COSTCO while my wife is shopping?
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My thoughts exactly, though it also helps that our local Costco was built in front of a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
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It is interesting the scales which people consider local. I can also see some of the advantages and disadvantages of each size scale. The smaller the your local area the more you can get to know it and the less time you spent travelling to it and if you use a vehicle lesser fuel is used. The bigger it is the more potential species diversity you can potentially find.
I often have a tendency to compare myself to people who have seen more than I and I see the greater distances they will drive on day trips, sometimes several hours without stopping. Not for me. My max for a day trip is 1 1/2 drive to Sudbury but that usually involves shopping and only a few hours for nature.
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