3 days and some hours, St Andrews Bog South 14PA35 and your dynamic life list in iNaturalist

St Andrews Bog South 14PA35 is located in the RM of Rockwood. The south half of Oak Hammock Marsh Wildlife Management Area is inside the boundaries of this square. The land is naturally lower than its surroundings and has several natural artesian spring to the north. While the bog was cleared and cultivated, it never gave up being wet. Migrating waterfowl continued to use the area in spring and fall creating conflict with those trying to farm grain. In 1973, the system of dikes and control structures were completed and the wildlife management area established. Agriculture dominates the land use elsewhere in this square.

At the time of posting, 1,592 observations had been uploaded by 95 observers. 378 species have been identified with the most frequently observed organism the Canada goose with 42 observations. 140 species of birds have been identified and 103 species of plants. The survey for the Breeding Bird Atlas of Manitoba confirmed 54 bird species nesting here, with another 58 species probable or possible. Here's the full list.

Birders are very familiar with the concept of the 'life list", celebrating as a 'lifer' each bird seen for the very first time by themselves. Merlin, the birding app developed by Cornell gives you a way to keep that lifelist on your device.

iNaturalist lets you take that one step further and keep track of every species of organism that you have observed - birds and everything else as well. To see this feature, look at your profile on the website while logged in and click on the 'lists' item in the menu. There is a nice shiny rectangular graphic labelled 'view dynamic lifelist' Click on this and you will see a list of every species from every kingdom as well as which ones you have added as iNat observations. You can filter the list by place so you can see your life list for just Manitoba or only Birds Hill Provincial Park. You can also reverse the list so that you can see a list of all the things that you have left to see. Its a good way to get ideas of what you might look for when you are out and about.

Please remember to stay safe while you are outside. Take all the appropriate precautions that we are all very good at after more than a year of practice. As you can see by our square by square survey, there are many places where very few observations have been made. Even within the higher count areas, there are places that are flying under the radar. One of these might just be your cup of tea for Saturday or Sunday.

Happy observing!

Posted on April 27, 2021 12:04 AM by marykrieger marykrieger

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