Looking Back; 2023
2023 was a strange year, on just every level from personal experiences to worldwide weather.
Going to Norway for three months was awesome, but I was also rained on most of the time there. Never have I seen the kind of flooding we had that summer, especially in Nesbyen. Then, while in Norway, Canada was on fire. With a heavy heart, I watched the wildfires taking control in other parts of the world. Having experienced wildfires in Greece in December 2007, I was horrified.
My iNat year started with the City Nature Challenge where I tried to cover a big section of the Greater Ottawa Area, and to my surprise, I managed to get 1st place in the iNat project for the Greater Ottawa Area: https://inaturalist.ca/projects/city-nature-challenge-2023-greater-ottawa-area
with 237 species observed and 447 observations logged.
In June, I left Canada for Norway and I was away for 3.5 months. During this time, I wanted to relearn and rediscover Norwegian flora & fauna so I created a project "Norway Summer 2023": https://inaturalist.ca/projects/norway-summer-2023 where I got 426 species and recorded 730 observations. Thanks to all the 188 iNat members for helping me identify many of my observations.
Then I tried to beat my 2022 personal record in the project Discord iNaturalist Yearlisting, and in 2023 I ended up as of Jan 1st, 2024 on 86th Place. Incredibly awesome as I planned to get within the top 100.
For some reason, the CNC numbers and my overview using the calendar do not display the same numbers which I do find a bit strange as both periods are Jan 1st to Dec 31st, however, my overview as of today shows 1124 species total and 2394 observations logged in 2023 compared to 1013 species and 1888 observations in 2022.
I doubt I'll do much better in 2024, but that remains to be seen.
I am very happy with my accomplishments. I wish I didn't have to work so I could do iNat all the time, but of course, that is not how the world works.
I especially appreciate having SEEK. This helped me a lot this year especially while in Norway. Sadly, I had to delete the app from my phone and re-install it, losing all my observations and badges due to a hick-up with the application. For about three months Seek wouldn't work well, hang, and freeze. The app also messed up all my challenges showing 0% when I had finished the challenge. I hope that reinstalling the app will help.
Cheers
