Becoming Backyard Naturalists

Mar 23, 2023 | Written by Gianna Caruso

Posted in Trails

Celebrate Trails Day 2023

In honor of Celebrate Trails Day, we will lead a Backyard Naturalist Hike on April 22 along the D&L Trail in Morrisville, PA.

Join us to capture the secret life of flora and fauna found in Bucks County using the iNaturalist App and nature journaling. This unassuming stretch of trail between Morrisville and Yardley may surprise you with its wildlife residents, including red-winged blackbirds, red-tailed hawks, woodpeckers, and more. Together we’ll also observe and record native plants blooming in diverse habitats.

Part of what makes this stretch of trail so special is its location along the Delaware Canal and adjacent to 165-acres of open space containing both woodlands and wetlands. Together these features constitute a greenway, which is perfect for exploring and recording outdoor observation using the iNaturalist app and nature journals.

Greenways are corridors of open space that can connect people, parks, historic sites, and natural areas. They vary greatly in scale, from narrow ribbons of green to wide corridors encompassing unique landscapes.

iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.

Specifically, it’s a crowdsourced species identification system and an organism occurrence recording tool. You can use it to record your own observations, get help with identifications, collaborate with others to collect this kind of information for a common purpose, or access the observational data collected by iNaturalist users.

iNaturalist’s mission is to build a global community of 100 million naturalists by 2030 in order to connect people to nature and advance biodiversity science and conservation. Anyone with a computer or smartphone with Internet can use iNaturalist to:

Keep track of your own observations, with maps, calendars, journals, life lists, etc.
Get help from the community in identifying what you observed
Share your expertise by adding identifications

Our tech-free option for nature observations are nature journals, which are a simple format of writing and drawing ideas about the natural world. They are a helpful means to inspire children’s creativity, intellectual ideas, and physical competencies (but just as fun for adults, too).

Register here to develop your backyard naturalist skills with DLNHC on Celebrate Trails Day.

Written by Brit Kondravy, DLNHC Conservation Coordinator

Brit serves as the Local Lead for Lehigh Valley Greenways – one of Pennsylvania’s eight Conservation Landscapes – and manages the LVG Mini Grant Program. In her role she is able to promote conservation and recreation through place-based partnerships throughout the five-county Corridor.

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