With the leaves changing and temperatures dropping, it’s a great time of year to get out and explore nature! As we move through fall, we can watch many seasonal changes unfold. Earlier in the season, you can still find many flowers blooming and attracting pollinators. But as the weeks go by, many of these birds and insects will start their migration journeys through and from Maine. To help monitor how Gilsland Farm Audubon Center in Falmouth changes throughout the fall, we’re hosting a Biodiversity Power Hour each month in September, October, and November, when we use iNaturalist to record all the species we observe in one hour. iNaturalist is an app (and nonprofit organization) designed to both help people identify plants and animals, and record and share data that becomes data for scientists and conservationists.
Our September Biodiversity Power Hour was a success with beautiful weather and we recorded 182 observations, all in just one hour! These observations included 92 species mostly of different plants, insects, and fungi. Notably, we also observed a Red-banded Hairstreak—only the third record for Maine and first record for Cumberland County, making it the northernmost recorded observation for the state!
We also observed 36 species of birds, including Northern Harriers, lots of migrating sparrows and warblers, and a couple of flyover Bobolinks! You can view all of the iNaturalist data here and our eBird data here to take a closer look at what we found at Gilsland Farm.
Our next Biodiversity Power Hours will be on October 9 and November 6 (pre-registration encouraged). Join us to help track how the meadow changes! You can arrive at 7:30 am for instruction on how to use the iNaturalist app, or join at 8 am as we get started. (Or watch this explainer video (on YouTube) on how to use iNaturalist from Staff Naturalist Doug Hitchcox, 12 minutes well spent!).
If you’re out exploring any of our other sanctuaries, we encourage you to upload any observations to iNaturalist. Each sanctuary has its own project page (find them all here) and your observations will automatically contribute to our projects and help us monitor biodiversity at our sanctuaries over time.
