| » Counts » Submit your sightings » Organized Surveys » More Involved Surveys » Festivals » Make Your Own Field Guide » Finished Programs « Ontario Field Naturalist's Toolchest |
While it is
quite a
pleasure to see and possible count our local flora and fauna, sometimes
it is nice to go beyond and make a contribution to scientific and/or
conservation efforts. Counts Birds Christmas Bird Counts (Near you) | Great Canadian Birdathon | Monthly Birdbashes (North Bay) (from Nipissing Naturalist website) | Great Backyard Birdcount Insect Butterflies & Dragonflies Marathons Carden Challenge 2017 Submit your sightings Birds eBird Canada Butterflies eButterfly | Send in Latest Records (at ontarioinsects.org) Dragonflies Send in Latest Records (at ontarioinsects.org) | Odonate atlas (offline) | Odonata Central Herps Ontario's Reptile and Amphibian Atlas All iNaturalist | Species at risk (MNR) | Ontario Road Ecology Group (Dead or alive animals seen on roadways) Organized Surveys Birds Winter Raptor Survey November to March, once a month Project Feeder Watch November to early April, at your convenience Nocturnal Owl Survey April or early May, couple of nights Project NestWatch May to July Breeding Bird Surveys June, one day Canadian Lakes Loon Survey June to August, at least once a month A Swift Night Out August or September, specific weekend Southern Ontario Bald Eagle Monitoring Project Golden-winged Warbler Atlas Project (GOWAP) Ontario Hummingbird Project North American Bird Phenology Program Convert historical data on cards into usable electronic forms Purple Martin Conservation Association Four projects devoted to monitoring Purple Martins. Report a banded Sandhill Crane North American Chimney Swift Nest Site Research Project Celebrate Urban Birds Fatal Light Awareness Program (Toronto) Important Bird Areas Program Canadian Migration Monitoring Network Species at Risk Herps Frog Watch March (late) to July, maybe longer. Salamander observations accepted too. Ontario Turtle Tally June, mostly Other Ice Watch November/December and March/April, four days around freeze-up and break-up Worm Watch Spring to Fall Plant Watch May and June, or whenever your target plants are blooming Bioblitz Ontario BioBlitz BioBlitzCanada More Involved Surveys Canadian Migration Monitoring Network Much effort, Bruce Peninsula is closest station Great Lakes Marsh Monitoring Program (April to June) Amphibian Surveys | Bird Surveys | Habitat Surveys (Three times for amphibians and/or twice for birds plus once for habitat) Festivals Louise de Kiriline Lawrence Nature Festival (North Bay) Passport to Nature Make Your Own Field Guide Discover Life: IDnature Guides It is possible to create a field guide with relatively little effort compared to a traditional field guide that takes years and thousands of dollars to develop. You can create an IDnature Guide on Discover Life. An IDnature guide uses an elimination key. The more items you select, the fewer possibilities you will be left with. With an IDnature guide you do not need to gather all the photos or illustrations on all the species, you can simply link to a variety of websites that showcase a particular species (although with permission in many cases). If you can find willing websites to link to, and are able to divide the species under meaningful categories then an IDnature guide is doable. An IDnature guide will not replace a standard field guide, but is useful for narrowing down the possibilites of what species you are looking at. Sometimes in large taxa, the possibilites are just too numerous forcing the time consuming task of looking through most of a field guide for an answer. Finished Programs Ontario Tree Atlas Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas A book "Atlas of Breeding Birds of Ontario, 2001-2005" compares results from first atlas. It is possible that data collection for the third atlas will begin in 2021. |