Day 303

 To be honest, I never really heard about the term citizen science until just a few years ago. If I recall correctly, it became a concept I was familiar with after I had already started teaching nature kindergarten. Once our nature kindergarten started collaborating with the Retzer Nature Center, I became an official volunteer at the center. In that process, I learned about a number of offerings that were either held or sponsored by the parks system. One such class focused on citizen science. Intrigued, I attended and learned about what citizen science is and how I could be a citizen scientist.

The rest is history.

After leaving the class, I knew citizen science was something I needed to be a part of in both my professional and personal lives.

I immediately became a citizen science volunteer for the county parks system and volunteered at a nature preserve with my family. There, we monitored an ephemeral pond, placed and checked birdhouses, and hosted service events including trash cleanup and garlic mustard pulling. 

At my school’s outdoor classroom, I fostered more citizen scientists. We monitored birdhouses, participated in a birdathon, worked on prairie restoration, and pulled invasive plants by participating in a garlic mustard pullathon. 

When we moved to the farm, we were a bit sad that we had to give up our volunteer work at the local preserve. But that doesn’t mean we were done being citizen scientists.

While the farm doesn't have a pond, we certainly have plenty of opportunities to bird watch. We can also work on adding native plants and removing invasive ones. If and when we create easier access into the neighboring preserve, we will have ample opportunities to be citizen scientists in a number of ways, many of which I might not even know about yet.

We have already hosted an event to collect information about cranes. We can certainly participate in the Great Wisconsin Birdathon and Garlic Mustard Pullathon. We could even do monarch tagging and participate in a bioblitz. In this event, volunteers try to identify as many species of living things in a certain area over a certain amount of time. This would be informative and interesting.