Photo from Canadian Wildlife Federation page on the City Nature Challenge
Halifax is participating in the iNaturalist-based City Nature Challenge again, this year over the days Friday Apr 26 to Monday Apr 29
It’s pretty simple to contribute to Halifax’s effort to document our natural world and illustrate citizen’s love of that world.
Participants photograph a nature observation of a “species” (e.g.a robin, or a flower) within the boundaries of HRM within the Apr 28-May 1 timeframe and upload it to iNaturalist. (HRM refers to Halifax Regional Municipality, now just called Halifax. It encompasses all of Halifax County.) Cape Breton Regional Municipality is the other NS participant.
HRM & CBRM are the NS Participants, see CWF for details
To participate one must be a member of iNaturalist, or sign up a member; then go to the Halifax Nature Challenge site and Join the 2024 project.
For each observation/record you must upload a photo and provide the date & the location (approximate or precise) and a guess at the species name. You can give your own guess for the name of the species, but iNaturalist can also offer its own guess at the species name and you can just select one. (Over time, the name is reviewed and eventually the correct is given or confirmed.)
Observations must be recorded between April 26 – 29 but participants have up until May 5th to upload & as they wish, help with ID of others’ observations.
At the Halifax Nature Challenge site, click on Join
The iNaturalist App can be put on a smart phone or computer. If the photo is taken and uploaded with a smartphone and is automatically location (GPS)-tagged, the location will be automatically uploaded – so both the location and the species name can be given by iNaturalist. If the photo is taken with a camera, it can be uploaded separately via a computer.
There’s lots more info here:
City Nature Challenge |Canada 2023| Défi nature urbaine
About the City Nature Challenge 2024: Halifax Regional Municipality, NS, Canada
As well as contributing to Halifax’s participation as a city, if you take a photo within Sandy Lake & Environs, that also contributes to a separate compendium of iNaturalist observations for this area:
And that can be done anytime!