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| Skipper on Zinnia, Courtesy of Bernice Williams |
If you are curious about pollinators and like taking pictures of them and learning more about them, you may be interested in a citizen science project. Scientists are asking ordinary people to collect data on the distribution of pollinators across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. All you need to do is take pictures, load them into iNaturalist.org, and add data such as where you took the picture, the date, and an identification of the pollinator. For example, the photo above is a skipper, a type of butterfly, taken by Bernice in the Mamie D. Lee Community Garden, near 100 Gallatin St. NE, Washington, DC. This project is a pollinator BioBlitz sponsored by the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign. It runs until July 31, 2026. Best of all, it has prizes for the person with the most observations in their region and for the person with the most species diversity.
If you like watching and listening to birds in your garden, there is another citizen science project sponsored by Colorado State University. This one is on songbirds as pollinators. Like the 2026 pollinator BioBlitz, you upload photos of songbirds on blooming flowers to iNaturalist, with data on location, date, and the songbird's identification. This project started in 2023 but continues today.
If you are new to iNaturalist, check out this information on getting started and these video tutorials on taking and uploading photos. The help section of iNaturalist is available in numerous languages, including English, French, and Spanish. Look for the tab in the upper-right corner, and click on your language.
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