Peterborough Field Naturalists host an i-Naturalist walk through Harper Park

21/09/2017

September 10th proved to be a sunny, warm delightful morning as 13 people arrived at Harper Park for the Peterborough Field Naturalists’ inaugural iNaturalist walk.

With smartphones in hand, we gathered for a quick overview.  iNaturalist has become a popular method to engage citizens who want to learn about the nature around them, and to document observations of species for further scientific research.  An inventory of the species in Harper Park will provide a baseline of biodiversity, and help to monitor and assess changes due to the impacts of development. All good stuff!

Although iNaturalist is user friendly the website iNaturalist.org and the Getting Started video are worth exploring. But first, everyone needed to make an iNaturalist account from the website, iNaturalist.org.

In order to maintain a species list for Harper Park in one spot, The Harper Park Stewardship Initiative Project was setup in iNaturalist.  Therefore, the next “to do” was JOIN this project and make certain each observation …

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Where Roads and Wetlands Meet

05/09/2017

Its a beautiful summer afternoon. We’ve just driven through a torrential downpour and arrived at Harper Creek. You can still detect that fresh earthy smell after a storm. We’ve come down to pay a visit to two of the most recent development projects in the watershed. As we pull off the road we can already see the significant changes that have taken place on the site of the future casino. The developer of the site has gone to great lengths to backfill the site with soil. Nearly a meter and a half of material has been deposited on top of the former wetland. Looking in areas where fill has not been placed, it is apparent why such great effort to fill the site has taken place. Patches of water, mud and aquatic plants permeate the site, signaling water at the surface of the soil, or just below. Years of degradation have still not managed to beat back the inexorable march …

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Harper Park finds a home on i-Naturalist

30/08/2017

Have you ever ventured into your favourite natural space and happened upon an exciting new plant or animal?

Whether in familiar surroundings, or new territory, we humans are creatures of observation, and we love to categorize and organize our observations to help us make sense of  the world around us. Identifying flora and fauna turns the intrepid hiker into one of nature’s detectives, and a key player in the annals of natural history.

So, you’ve just seen something new that aroused your curiosity. After consulting your field guides and making a tentative ID, affirmation that you have correctly identified your species would be gratifying.  Or, perhaps you remain mystified…

Now there is a way to share and confirm the identification of your discovery with a host of other naturalists and scientists through a web based site called iNaturalist.  All it takes is a cell phone, or camera and you are on your way to solving your mystery while also  contributing …

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Springtime Adventures in Harper Park

22/07/2017

It’s early on a crisp Tuesday morning, much of the city is still asleep, and the sun has just risen over the horizon. This is not normally a time of day that I have appointments in my schedule, but for the last several weeks I have been joining a group of experienced ornithologists, cataloguing the incredible bird life that is migrating through Harper Park. This has been part of an effort over the last few months to catalogue as much of the flora and fauna in Harper Park as possible.

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