Hakai Magazine recently published a piece on the bioblitz project on Galiano Island.
Mushroom art cards available
On May 15, the new 2022 Mushroom Art Card set is available for purchase. A project by Metchosin Foundation and Metchosin ArtPod, the boxed set of 36 heavy-cardstock 4″ X 6″ cards features the work of three dozen (mostly local) artists on the card faces.
The cards depict locally common mushrooms. On the back of each card is a description of the mushroom by the authors of the new Mushrooms of British Columbia. More information about the cards is on the Metchosin Biodiversity site.
2022 Metchosin species count happening
The 2022 Metchosin species count has started. You can track the ongoing count on its iNaturalist page. In the first four months of the year, about 130 observers made 2000 observations of 750 different species.
These four months of observations added 45 new species to the Metchosin species count, bringing the total to 3325.
Hundreds of identifiers from all over the world chipped in to help observers decide what they had found. For an example of the sort of dialogue that goes on, see the discussion triggered by Finn McGhee’s discovery of dead bird along the Tower Point waterfront. After much back-and-forth, experts decided that it was a Turkey Vulture (well, ex-vulture). For an example of the simple beauty that can be found in these observations, see the snaps of the Mountain Lady Beetle. Not all the observations in these four months were visual–some animals (the Pacific Tree Frog, for example) can be identified by sound alone. Nor are all of the observations made in wilderness areas–James Miskelly found a bit of the wild, a Pine Trogossitid Beetle, had invaded his house. On April 23, the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society hosted a foray in Metchosin that found 27 species of mushrooms–one species for each person on the foray.
The count will be going on all year, with lots happening almost every day. Just yesterday (May 3), eight people added 30 observations to the 2022 Metchosin iNaturalist project. To be part of it, all you have to do is grab your camera or smartphone and head outdoors. This is citizen science, as described in a recent edition of The Narwhal.
Andy MacKinnon on Earth Day 2022
Metchosin’s own Andy MacKinnon was at Christ Church Cathedral last night to give a short Earth Day talk in their Earth Songs musical series. You can hear his 15-minute address at 9:00 in this video of the occasion. A good backgrounder to conservation efforts in the Metchosin area.
Miskelly garry oak work recognized
The work of Metchosin Biodiversity Project member James Miskelly on the DND Garry oak lands has been recognized in a recent profile from the Pacific Forestry Centre. Congratulation James! Click on image to read.
James regularly logs his Metchosin (and other places) natural history observations in iNaturalist. See some of his pictures and sightings here.
Video about Ecological Reserve sites on Vancouver Island
Metchosin Biodiversity Project member Garry Fletcher worked this year with videographer Jamie Firth (now a student at Quest College) to put together a great visual experience of some of the BC Ecological Reserves.
CHEK news feature on Metchosin Foundation features the Metchosin bioblitz work
Part of a CHEK-TV report, the Vital People series on November 1, 2021, was about the work of the Metchosin Foundation. Segments of it featured the work of the Metchosin Biodiversity Project.
Metchosin Biodiversity Project in the news
Thanks to Andy MacKinnon, the Metchosin Biodiversity Project has been in the news recently. In the Capital Daily and the Goldstream News Gazette. Click on the images of the news articles to view the writeups.
Metchosin Mycoblitz 2020 (Virtual)
The regular events of the fall Metchosin MycoBlitz didn’t happen in this pandemic year. Still, we managed an inventory of sorts. We set up a site on iNaturalist that gathered in all iNaturalist fungi observations (includes lichen observations) made within the bounds of the District of Metchosin from the beginning of September to the 9th of December.
In this period, we accumulated 561 observations from 44 different observers. These observations represent about 230 distinct species. Interestingly, this represents more observations and species of fungi that we typically have in our one-day non-pandemic MycoBlitzes.
You can view these observations at the project website. Below is a map of the observations.
The observations from the 2020 MycoBlitz project do not automatically go into the Metchosin Biodiversity Project database. We reviewed the observations and the ones that seemed to be correct observations (with the bar raised for species that were uncommon or unexpected) were manually moved into the Metchosin Biodiversity Project database.
About 10 of these fungal species were new to the database, When these new ones were added to other non-fungal 2020 iNaturalist observations from Metchosin, our species count increased by over a hundred this year–we now have more than 2920 species in our Metchosin count (with 860 being fungi and lichens).
You can view the iNaturalist site for the Metchosin Biodiversity Project here.
For the majority of our Metchosin MycoBlitz and Metchosin Bioblitz observations, we do not have pictures, nor are most of the observations tied into vouchered specimens. We also do not have exact GPS locations. Since moving the database over to iNaturalist in 2017, we have begun to accumulate pictured observations that are tied to specific GPS locations. In addition, we are making a more concerted effort to voucher specimens of these observations–about 90 species were vouchered this fall.
At the right (or below) is a gallery of photos from the 2020 Metchosin virtual MycoBlitz. Select the gallery to begin the slide show.
Metchosin Biodiversity
Welcome to the web site of the Metchosin BioBlitz and MycoBlitz. The team at the Metchosin Biodiversity Project sponsors the blitzes and publishes the results on these pages in order to:
- Increase our understanding of Metchosin’s species and ecosystems.
- Share natural history information with interested people.
- Use this information to protect Metchosin’s species and ecosystems.
We started our work in 2011 with BioBlitzes and (a bit later) MycoBlitzes. Our most up-to-date inventories of Metchosin species are available in the Metchosin Biodiversity project of iNaturalist. By the end of 2022 we had catalogued over 3412 species, from almost 20,000 observations made 480 people. See the posts below for the latest totals. We encourage everyone interested in helping us to log their photographed Metchosin observations in iNaturalist. All of these observations will be automatically logged by our 2023 collection project. Curators will review these and move most of them into our iNaturalist database (Metchosin Biodiversity Project).
The Metchosin Talk and Walk series has started up again, post-COVID. You can read about our previous events on the Talk and Walk pages.
The Metchosin Biodiversity Project acknowledges the regular support of the Metchosin Foundation. The project is a member of IMERSS.