Boerne Star
A Time to Connect: iNaturalist and City Nature Challenge
By Craig Hensley, Texas Nature Trackers Biologist with Texas Parks & Wildlife Department
Conjured up in 2016 as a friendly competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco to document the natural world, the City Nature Challenge has grown into a global four-day event encouraging people to get outside and explore the natural world using the app, iNaturalist. Thousands of people around Texas participate annually, including in Boerne and the greater San Antonio area.
For those of you who don’t know about iNaturalist, it is an app available on any smartphone that not only helps you with possible identifications of plants and animals but, unlike other identification apps, shares the images and sounds you document with everyone from scientists and natural history book authors to agencies including our own Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and Cibolo Center for Conservation.
In fact, to date, citizen scientists have contributed more than 4,100 observations of 749 species of plants and animals to the Cibolo Nature Center and Farm iNaturalist project. Did you have any idea that The Cibolo had this kind of diversity? The crazy thing is this has been done by only 31 people – and I know for a fact that more than 31 people visit the nature center on any given day. What does this mean? For me, as someone with an insatiable curiosity about all things plant and animal, who spends a great deal of time professionally and personally studying the natural world, I’m amazed at the number of people who visit the nature center but never really experience the nature of the center.
Many run through it, walk through it, and get their pictures taken in it, but few actually take the time to slow down to learn what the center offers in terms of plant and animal diversity. Yes, there is a creek that flows through it that everyone loves, but have you ever sat along the bank in December watching the Winter Wren, a diminutive bird that calls the creek home each winter, as it probes the crevices and caverns created by the roots of the bald cypress trees? Or have you sat on a bench overlooking the creek near dark and listened to the “who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all” calls of the resident Barred Owls?
On a walk along the paths surrounding the grassland area, have you slowed down to witness the aerial dance of the flashy Vermilion Flycatcher, or watched a bumblebee-mimicking Beelzebub robber fly as it watches for passing bees, flies, and other insects upon which to prey? At the marsh, have you come upon a Green Heron stalking fish and frogs along the edge of the water or sat and watched the plethora of dragonflies and their more delicate-looking damselfly cousins as they zoom to and fro in search of prey or mates?
Even in the parking lot, the senses can be overwhelmed by the fragrance emanating from the flowers of Mexican plums in late February and early March which, in turn, attracts every pollinator from seemingly miles around. What I am describing is the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to the diversity, beauty, and wonderfulness of the nature center. If you haven’t done so, I encourage you to slow down, disconnect from your earbuds and cell phones, and listen to the delicate song of the Eastern Bluebird, explore the diversity of form, color, and function of the array of wildflowers, hug a tree – yes, really – and re-connect to the natural world. And if you need a reason to begin, consider downloading the iNaturalist app and become a participant in logging the nature of the center during the City Nature Challenge on April 26-29. I am unabashedly biased, but I believe you won’t regret it.