During the first week of our placement we had the privilege to meet experts in various fields from the Thunder Bay area to help us with our work once we would head out to Porphyry Island. One of these experts was Brian Ratcliff, a local birder who showed us the basics of finding and identifying birds. After going birding with him, I decided to watch the ‘’Big Year’’ movie which is about a North-American contest where 3 folks attempt to photograph the most bird species in one year as I felt inspired after an afternoon of birding near the docks of Thunder Bay.

A few weeks later, now that we’re on the island, one of our main projects is to find and identify as many species of plants, animals, bugs, trees and funghi as we can. As we do this almost every day, I now feel the same thrill as the characters in that movie while I try to photograph a new bird I hear or see in the distance, or a new plant that I don’t recognize.

As of today, Kelsey and I have about 400 observations on INaturalist with about 200 different species! And this is only after having covered about half of the island! Porphyry Island being born out of volcanic rocks, the general feeling we have as we explore the shores of the island must be similar to what Darwin felt as he surveyed the Galapagos Islands in search of new species. So our office is really quite unique!

For now I’m still very excited about the possibilities of finding new species as we keep discovering the island and as the weather and season changes. I think that wherever I go after this placement, I will keep being active on iNaturalist to find, observe and identify new species.

I thought it might be fun to share some of my favorite fauna and flora pictures from the project so far, so here is my top 10:

---

Post comment

You must write a comment to post it!