As more BioBlitz observations roll in, our species tally gets ever-closer to reaching the 200 mark. Already, the Hiroshi Loop Trail has become the Harris Center's best-documented property on iNaturalist! It now exceeds 430 observations and 180 species, including a few iNaturalist firsts for New Hampshire, like this Silver Leafhopper (Athysanus argentarius; https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/121783106).

An introduced species from Eurasia to the United States, the Silver Leafhopper has been documented in every state within the Northeast, except New Hampshire. That is, until we found an abundant population of them during our bioblitz on Tuesday! I think everyone probably saw these little, light-tan jumping insects in the meadow. How widely are these non-native insects spread through New Hampshire? It's currently a mystery, but more documentation via iNaturalist observations will help us find out.

Check out all 190 species documented (so far) from the Hiroshi BioBlitz: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/hiroshi-land-bioblitz-2022?tab=species

And some of great photos by participants:

• North American Porcupine by @tmomeyer (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/122095319)
• Ovenbird nest by @karenseaver (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/121855180)
• the rare white variant of the Japanese Iris by @malloryroof (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/121819560)
• Sheep laurel by @brett-amy-thelen (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/121809642)

For those of you who have yet to post observations from the BioBlitz, let's work together to get these mostly submitted by the end of the weekend so I can put together a final summary next week.

Happy exploring,

• Steven

Posted on June 17, 2022 11:06 AM by slamonde