Big Brown Bat foraging a couple of hours after the solar eclipse on April 8. © iNat user @hobiecat

Congratulations to iNat user @hobiecat for winning the April 2024 Photo-observation of the Month for the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist! Their photograph of a Big Brown Bat foraging the evening of the April 8 solar eclipse received the most faves of any iNaturalist observation in Vermont during the past month.

Big Brown Bats are year-round Vermont residents. hibernating inside winter shelters called hibernacula like caves, mines, hollow trees, and buildings. In springtime when insect populations return, these bats emerge to feast. In the late evening, they take wing to forage over fields, along forest edges, high in the canopy, and along bodies of water for beetles and other flying insects. This iNaturalist observation shows this particular Big Brown Bat foraging from around 5:15 to 5:50 PM, a couple of hours after eclipse totality. The dusk-like quality of light during the eclipse may have confused some wildlife, including this bat, into emerging to forage early!

With 18,816 observations submitted by 1,560 observers in April, it was very competitive. Click on the image above to see and explore all of the amazing observations.

Visit the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist where you can vote for the winner this month by clicking the ‘fave’ star on your favorite photo-observation. Make sure you get outdoors and record the biodiversity around you, then submit your discoveries and you could be a winner!

We're already halfway through the month of May, which means it's time to start casting your votes for the best Vermont Atlas of Life Photo-observation of the Month! You can "fave" any and all observations that you like—located to the right of the photographs and just below the location map is a star symbol. Click on this star and you've fave'd an observation. At the end of each month, we'll see which Photo-observation has the most votes and crown them the monthly winner! Check out this month's awesome observations and click the star for those that shine for you.

Check out who is in the lead and see a list of all of this month's Photo-observations so far!

If you would like scientists and conservation biologists at the Vermont Atlas of Life and beyond use your valuable observations, there's a few iNaturalist settings that are important to check and set.

The first one is geoprivacy. Have you been wondering about that blue circle surrounding your observations on the map? Curious about how iNaturalist protects the privacy of species of conservation concern? Want to ensure that your observations are useful to conservationists and researchers in Vermont? Read our short primer on iNaturalist geoprivacy and learn how you can best set your geoprivacy settings for the Vermont Atlas of Life so that we can use your observations for science and conservation. Visit https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQUa6ZXvL9YNWeG5Yz5DOW4j2J8fOcDBrD5x3LvrEE1rQlANI3I_wql62eY1NM736Ctbj_ADFb851Uv/pub

The second important setting is your copyright selections. Check out our short primer on setting copyright for observations, photographs, and sound recordings so that we can use your data for science and conservation. Visit https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/84932-updated-choosing-licensing-that-allows-scientists-to-use-your-observations.

Thank you so much for all your observations and helping us conserve biodiversity!