905 Sightings At Black Oak Heritage Park (2023 + Q1 of 2024)

By Mark Nenadov

Introduction

According to the City of Windsor, Black Oak Heritage Park “supports one of the finest stands of black oak in Southwestern Ontario.” What a great place to do some “citizen sciencing”! This gem, part of the Ojibway Prairie Complex, was the site of many ECFN hikes in 2023 and early 2024.

And here we will look at what information citizen scientists have collected during this period (January 2023-March 2024).

The Pleasures and Perils of “Collecting Data”

“Data makes the world go ‘round,” a Gray Catbird once said to me. Or maybe not, but sometimes it’s hard to know how to start an article talking about observation data.

It’s not that the information is inherently boring, it’s just that aggregation tends to flatten things out a bit. And you can’t just trot out the numbers right away.. 

That said, buried in the aggregations is fascinating data just waiting to be unleashed. I don’t know whether this article is going to do it justice. In fact, it likely won’t. What do all these little pins on the map mean? Well that’s the work before us! I like to think that the birds appreciate citizen science data collection and the catbirds are cheering us on.

Technology has made it easier than ever to collect and manage vast amounts of data. While my focus will be largely on the observations themselves, it would be interesting if we knew what devices generated these observations. No doubt, it would include various iPhones, Androids, professional grade SLR cameras, and some point-and-shoot cameras.

Citizen science technology has been improving by leaps and bounds. Besides all these portable devices, there are now a handful of really good apps such as iNaturalist, eBird, and Merlin. 

There will always be challenges and critics, but we mustn’t lose the bigger picture– these imperfect tools we have are invaluable. Let’s keep collecting data and let the future figure out the rest. After all, there’s joy in watching this unfold!

905 Observations

In total, 905 observations were made. This was ~2% of the total iNaturalist observations in Essex County for the same period. 

These 905 observations were posted by 66 different individuals. And 286 people helped in the identification process. 

In those 905 observations, we have 401 species. This is roughly 8% of the species count identified throughout the whole county during the period at hand.  

Here are some categories of species represented:

• 41% plants
• 24% insects
• 15% fungi
• 8% birds
• 3% arachnids
• 2% mammals

6% of the species represented are defined by iNaturalist as “threatened”. 

A Significant Find – Adult Catalpa Sphinx

Among our dataset is a significant find for Essex County. Kyle Krebs found and posted the first adult record of a Catalpa Sphinx on iNaturalist in our county! (May 30, 2023). 

There have been a decent handful of caterpillar posts, so I was always wondering when the first adult would drop!  Since then another adult Catalpa has been posted by Xander Campbell, also within Essex County.

Some Other Interesting Finds

• A dead Long-tailed Duck. Sad to see, but certainly not many opportunities to see this species so up close!
• Planthopper Parasite Moth (Fulgoraecia exigua) larva was found. A somewhat recent addition to our county list.
• Round-headed Bush Clover (Lespedeza capitata) seems to be not very widespread in our county. At least in terms of inaturalist data, it’s only been reported in the Cedar Creek region and the Ojibway Prairie Complex region. It has a long history of use among First Nations peoples for tea and as an antidote.
• Reversed Haploa Moth
• Sessile Bellwort. If you’ve ever heard the expression “Sow your wild oats”, this plant is also called “wild oats”.

Introducing Some of the Most Frequently Reported Species

Most Observed

• White-tailed Deer (17 observations)
• DeKay’s Browsnake (10 observations)
• Common Milkweed (10 observations)
• Amur Honeysuckle (9 observations)
• Mayapple (8 observations)

Most Observed Introduced Species

• Amur Honeysuckle (9 observations)
• Jimsonweed (8 observations)
• Garlic Mustard (8 observations)
• White Poplar (5 observations)
• Wooly Mullein (5 observations)

One Way To Navigate The Data

905 is a lot of observations to summarise. There are several ways to get a quick understanding of large amounts of data. One way is to look at small chunks of the data, either evenly spaced or randomised. It’s sometimes amazing what sort of insights you can quickly gain by just looking at little samples. In any case, it gives me a way to share something with exerting my own filter.

Let’s try something here, let’s roll the dice and select 3 sets of 5 randomised selections from these 905 observations.

Roll #1:

Roll #2

Roll #3

That was sort of fun, but it’s hard to say that any sort of huge insight emerged. But there are some pretty cool, although not entirely rare, creatures are represented here.

Some Further Thoughts

1. Only two out of 905 observations were sound recordings, maybe this is an area we should try to develop and expand on further. We certainly could do many bird recordings during Spring Migration! Amphibians and insects would also be a good target for this.

2. 361 out 905 observations require further ID in order to reach verification standards. It would be great to have some people go through them and improve that. This can get complicated, though, as some of the species may be difficult or impossible to identify from the provided photos.

3. Under-represented taxon (in my opinion) include Crustaceans (1 observation of 1 species), Spiders (13 observations of 11 species), Flies (15 observations of 10 species), and Amphibians (6 observations of 1 species).  Perhaps these would be some good targets for further surveys.

Conclusion

I will not impose any further conclusions on this data except to say that I’m very thankful for the efforts that were made to collect it! I will also say that there’s a lot of interesting aspects to this data yet to be explored! It has been integrated into an ever growing collection of data. Maybe that’s where it’s most valuable, not as 905 observations per say, but as a part of a larger effort, part of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of data points. Subjected to further analysis and trends. Which we get to be a small part of.

Please continue getting out into nature and snapping photos and posting them to iNaturalist! There are so many reasons why it matters.

Mark Nenadov