Okay, today I’m setting myself a personal challenge to find at least 1 more LIVING little critter observation.
That is, an outdoor observation (sorry cellar spiders, ladybugs, house centipedes).
I have some spots and ideas to try. Would anybody else care to take up this challenge with me? Please post your results (or non-results?). Good luck!
I am SO in need of getting out for a hike today, so yes, I’m in!
Now, are we focusing only on animals? Or even more finely, only on invertebrates? It’s actually warmish here today, so I suspect I could easily find isopods and such.
As it is oddly warm this time of year, I see a surprising amount of life. Of course, I find isopods and slugs beneath rocks, but plants have also started to sprout due to the warm weather. I’ll attempt the challenge.
It’s 19:30, kinda too late, but +6C tomorrow, I’m planning to look for insects on snow.
I’ll do it later 
Yeah, I’m hoping for invertebrates other than the sub-bark and isopod tribes. But I’ll settle for anything too, when cornered.
From Calvin & Hobbes (and Susie D):
“Hey, here’s a worm! Worms are bugs, aren’t they?”
“Eww gross, Calvin! That’s been floating in a puddle for days.”
"Class doesn’t start for 10 minutes. If I can catch 5 bugs a minute, I’ll get an “A"on my collection. See, I’m off to a good start.”
“Five bugs a minute?! You’re out of your mind.”
“Here’s another already.”
“That’s a little ball of lint!”
"Like I’m sure the teacher’s going to look REAL CLOSE at every hairy bug in the 30 kids’ collections!"
It wouldn’t be fair if I said I’ll take up your challenge. Because I have just completed my own personal challenge: “my daily beast” for the whole year. But the weather is even for the south of Spain exceptionally warm and anybody can find something at 20°C. I did find something nicer than expected, though. :-)
A nymph of Empusa pennata
Well, I would accept that challenge, but it’s pouring rain today. Possibly one of the bigger rain days for the year. Through a window count?
Sometime in early December I decided to see if I could get to 1000 leaf taxa by the end of the year. (In retrospect, I probably should have made this decision a bit earlier, when some of the taxa I have been underrecording were more available.)
It’s dark here by now and the annual noise-making ritual is already in full swing, but I added five to my list today, thanks mostly to the tiny arthropods living on a mossy wall and in a pile of leaf mould. This still leaves me a couple of dozen species short of my goal. Either I’m going to have to really dig through my photo archives to find stuff I’ve overlooked or hesitated to upload because I’m ashamed of the barely IDable photos, or I’m going to have to miraculously become an expert at IDing flies, ichneumonids, mosses, and lichens. I doubt I am likely to manage either in the next four hours, so I guess I get to look forward to that milestone to start off the new year instead.
Fortunately, I got a couple observations of slugs and isopods, but I’m soaked by rain (forgot an umbrella, big mistake). Looks like that’s all I can get today unless the rain ceases.
A bit of poking around yielded observations of a Disc Snail:
an old Wool Sower Gall Wasp gall:
and a purple-ish Cutleaf Grapefern:
Plus I made a couple dozen other observations and heard a Barred Owl calling. A lovely way to spend part of the last day of 2022!
Whew! This was tough. I had two unexpected wrenches thrown into my anticipated schedule. And I guess I should have mentioned that I’m in southern Ontario – Canada. Hence, the challenge.
But, I also knew that we had gone from a huge snowfall, bitter blizzard last week, to an unbelievable high today of 11C!
So, I knew there was a ‘snowball’s chance in Hell’ of getting something.
But first, to the mall because my wife needs new boots. While I waited… I ran out of the large mall and started snooping about anything that wasn’t made of steel, aluminum, glass or plastic. A few little shrubs, some flowerpots. And a couple of small pine trees in a small section of the parking lot. Where I spotted this:
But that was it. And it didn’t fit the challenge of LIVING proof. (Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.)
So on the drive home, just as dusk was approaching, I pulled into my ace up my sleeve place: the agricultural research centre that’s about 15 minutes from home. And made me way to this:
The tunnel that takes a creek under the side service road of the highway we came in on. Where I just KNEW that there would be some crawlies. And there were! Including a flying insect! Still not sure about all of these but most of these you will recognize and ALL still moving along.
I’m pretty sure none of these are ‘lifers’ as I was here only a month ago. But I admit it was a very satisfying way to end my first year as an iNatter.
Happy New Year everyone, and may it be your most natural one yet!
Hey, I’d be happy to try and ‘de-embarass’ some of those kind of shots for you with my photo toys and experience. (You may have seen some of what I can do in my recent Photo Rescue post).
Feel free to message me and attach a typical sample to work on if you’re interested. Good luck!
You’ve probably seen more interesting species today than I have all fall. Happy New Year everybody!
So, maybe not the last, but the first challenge of the year for me, didn’t find what I tried, but got some lifers. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=2023-01-01&place_id=any&user_id=marina_gorbunova&verifiable=any
Congratulations!
And to a Happy New Year with lots of interesting beasts!
Wow. If in the coming year I could achieve the observation rate in a week what you do in a day Marina, it would be a very happy new year indeed! Amazing!
Thanks for joining in my little challenge and happy trails for you in 2023.
Thank you, wish you he same!
Weather helped me, it’s +3C today, and in a week it’ll be -21C, so I rather will stay at home for some time. Hope you will achieve the amount of observations you have in mind, this year I’m planning to get 20k, but it’ll be hard!
When I read this post, it was already 10:00, so I had to hurry! I got my coat on the ran into the backyard, hoping to find something, anything! Of what I discovered, this plant has to be the highlight.
I don’t know what it is, but it’s a lifer. If any of you do, you can identify it here:
https://inaturalist.ca/observations/145589604
Happy 2023 everyone!
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