Parks for Pollinators 2024: Belfast Parks and Recreation's Journal

Thank you to our volunteers who assisted during the 2024 Park for Pollinators BioBlitz held in the City of Belfast's parks and gardens. Approximately half of our places had observations, and we'll work to improve our volunteer levels and observations over the next year and until the next BioBlitz!

We'll be posting a summary of our results for the general public soon; if you keep your iNaturalist.org account, you'll always be able to see the Parks and Recreation Department's observations and data as we continue to monitor and photograph and observe!

Pam Salokangas
Parks and Recreation Director

To everyone who has participated so far, thank you for your help and for getting involved in our first-year project.

There are five days left in the BioBlitz as it will end at 11:59 PM on September 30. There are several sites that haven't yet had any observations, so if you still have time to observe and capture photos, please consider visiting: Pendleton Park, The Muck, Grove Cemetery Chapel Gardens, Eleanor Crawford Park, Post Office Square/Coast Guard Gardens, Belfast Free Library gardens, Belfast Common, Steamboat Landing Park, Heritage Park, the gardens at the Belfast Public Restrooms, and the Park on Main. It would be fantastic to have first-year observations in every park or garden that we have listed in the project.

Again, thank you to the folks who have been observing throughout September; it's not too late to start with five days left in the month! After today's rain, we're supposed to have decent weather in our area, so we hope you will give some time to this project.

Thank you!

Pam
Belfast Parks and Recreation

If you want to see all of the agencies participating in this year's 2024 BioBlitz through the National Recreation and Park Association, click the link below:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/parks-for-pollinators-2024

Then, scroll down to see the various # of observations and then scroll some more to see how Belfast is doing compared to other projects. Please remember, we are in year 1 and it takes time to build the audience and the spaces within the BioBlitz. As changes are made, plants are added, there will be more biodiversity! By the time we're finished, I hope we land in the middle of the pack.

Additionally, there are only TWO BioBlitz projects in Maine this year--us and South Portland. Let's go!! :)

Thank you all for participating!!

Pam
Belfast Parks and Recreation

Hi everyone. If you're paying attention to this particular BioBlitz project, you've probably figured out by now that we've had some technical difficulties. Late last week, I was in touch with iNaturalist.org's IT folks and with NRPA, who sponsors the national Parks for Pollinators BioBlitz.

Late on Saturday, we started to see some observations appear as we were working inside City Park during the morning's BioBlitz Meet-n-Greet. Some of the City Park observations were showing up and some were not. After some technical work on Sunday, we determined with lots of IT help that the KML files that we used work, but because of the size of some of them, the boundaries were preventing observations from appearing.

So, today, Belfast Parks and Recreation worked on new KML files and will be uploading those this evening. The new files will have more flexibility in the spaces used during the rest of this event and should prevent any observations from being lost!

Thank you all for your work to date, and I believe we'll gather steam over the last few weeks of the BioBlitz. The weather is ideal with warm days to get out and visit the gardens and parks! We appreciate you all and your patience during this technical challenge!

Pam
Belfast Parks and Recreation

If you haven't participated in a BioBlitz before, do not worry! Join Belfast Parks and Recreation on Sunday, September 8 for our BioBlitz Meet and Greet event at Belfast City Park. Here is the link to the event posted on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/8206533752719045?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[]%7D

We'll be at the City Park Pavilion from 9:30-10:30 AM, and we'll provide some background for the project as well as hints and tips and tricks for your collections. Bring your smart phone (fully charged) and have the iNaturalist App already downloaded to your phone with your account active!

We look forward to helping you toward making observations for this wonderful community event!

Hi everyone. We hope you will join us for the month-long Parks for Pollinators BioBlitz 2024 for Belfast Parks and Recreation Department. This is the first time our department is participating in this event, and this is the 5th BioBlitz in which our Director has participated. We're excited to learn more about our pollinator inventory and then how we can use that information to improve our gardens and park spaces. Should we plant more milkweed? Should we create more variety in our pollinator meadows?

Be sure to add our project to your Projects so that when you participate, you are cataloging under the project. And if you'd like to learn more about the BioBlitz, how to use iNaturalist, and where are project sites are, please plan to attend our Pollinator Meet and Greet on Sunday, September 8. More details are posted on our department's Facebook page under Events.

Thank you and we'll see you out and about very soon!

Hi everyone. We have finished the detailed work to include listing the pollinators and pollinating plants for which we will be searching, and we've updated all of our locations for this first year event. Many locations will include local parks and many of the gardens around the City--some of which are in parks and some of which are at public buildings and spaces.

We hope all of you in the Belfast, ME area will consider joining us for this month-long BioBlitz, helping us to get our first-year inventory established!

I promise that you will identify at least one pollinator and one pollinator plant you haven't seen before! And, you might even discover a place you haven't been to before!

Hi everyone. We are hoping that some of our local and regional iNaturalist participants will help us verify our observations as we roll into the final preparations for the September BioBlitz.

Our account is new, and in order to upload the places we want to include as part of the BioBlitz, we have to have 50 observations and they have to be 50 verifiable observations! Please help. We need at least two verifications per observation.

Thank you for your help in advance!

Belfast Parks and Recreation