Report and Photos by John Martin

April 28 2023 – May 01 2023

The City Nature Challenge is an annual event that happens simultaneously on the same dates around the world. Vancouver is now one of well over 400 cities participating worldwide with a total of 41 across Canada alone in 2023.

Nature Vancouver held 4 separate walks in our regional parks during this event. The weather held out on almost all days with just a bit of rain on one day. The walks by Nature Vancouver were at: Iona Beach, Colony Farms, Burnaby Lake and Capilano River. We had a total of 8 members and one non-member attend and we all enjoyed sharing our observations. Some of us used a camera, most used a phone with either iNaturalist or its companion application, SEEK to identify what we saw.

The tremendous biodiversity of our province was on full display. Based on preliminary results as of this report, a total of 612 observers spread out over all of Vancouver and surrounding areas (Vancouver, Surrey, Tri-Cities, Richmond and Delta) made 8918 observations and uploaded these to iNaturalist during this event. The species count is not finalized but likely is close to 1,000+ for the Vancouver area alone. From what I can tell so far, we provided around 500 observations and about 125 unique species identifications on our Nature Vancouver walks.

The statistics for the global event are just coming in but it looks like there will be around 1.85 million iNaturalist observations worldwide. Wow comes to mind.

It’s impossible to show or even list everything we saw but below are some photos that show the diversity we saw on these 4 days. Hope to see you next year, but remember you can be observing and uploading to iNaturalist anytime, anywhere.

(From Top Left to Right) Blow Fly, Douglas Squirrel, Reflexed Stonecrop, Red-flowering Currant, Canada Geese and Goslings, Mountain Bluebird, Satyr Comma, Turtle, Northern Pacific Tree Frog, and Wood Forget-Me-Not