by Watershed Stewardship Assistant, Rachel Morris. Banner photo by Jon Martin.
OWC staff enjoying spring weather on a nature walk in the coulees, March 2025.
Happy spring, watershed residents! Why not celebrate the warmer weather and renewed plant and animal activity with a nature walk? Migratory birds are soon returning, plants are tentatively sending out new shoots, and insects (as well as many other animals) are emerging from hibernation!
If you’re looking for a low-stakes way to get outdoors this spring, we have an idea for you: step outside and look for plants and animals right in your neighbourhood. We have been using iNaturalist, a biodiversity sharing platform, to identify and record our sightings in the field, and we encourage you to try it too.
We’re always learning about the plants and animals that call our watershed home! This willow was spotted at the Pincher Creek rodeo grounds last May.
What is iNaturalist?
iNaturalist is “an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.” Users upload photos of animals, plants, fungi, and more to the platform, and others help identify the organism. The result is a global network of biodiversity records, sharing the presence, occurrence, and distribution of over 500 000 species. You can learn all about iNaturalist, including how to use it, from their Getting Started guide.
OWC recently made an account. We’ve added our field sightings from 2024 and into the spring of 2025. The iNaturalist community helped identify our observations and taught us about species we’d never heard of! If you want to see our field observations, you can follow our account at www.inaturalist.org/people/oldmanwatershedcouncil.
Here is the upload process of a shrub we saw last week. Take a picture through the app or add some you’ve already taken (left); then type in the name of the organism, or view the app’s suggestions if you’re not sure what it is (right). Then, when you’re ready, post the observation to the iNaturalist forum!
What is there to see this time of year?
Spring is an exciting time to observe nature, since everything changes very quickly. Your own backyard may have different species popping up from week to week. In the next few weeks, you may see the following in the Oldman watershed:
early-emerging insects like lady beetles, flies, and (coming soon) bumble bees;
brave, cold-tolerant plants, like phlox and prairie pasqueflowers;
birds that overwintered in our watershed, such as black-capped chickadees and bald eagles;
birds that are coming back for summer, such as robins, red-winged blackbirds, and mountain bluebirds;
deer and other mammals that are active in winter or just waking up from hibernation;
tracks, scat, and other traces of animals—you can upload these too!
There were 498 different species observed in our watershed in April of 2024, so there is lots to see. Sharing your observations can help people learn about migration and hibernation timing. For example, the first bumble bee observed in our watershed in 2024 was sighted on April 13th, and the first Swainson’s hawk in the watershed (on its return from Argentina!) was seen on April 18th.
Last year, in May (a bit later into spring), OWC staff saw flowering saskatoon bushes, shooting stars, and kinnikinnick.
When you’re next outside, challenge yourself to find five organisms that you can photograph. They could be plants, insects, fungi, birds, or anything else. Try and pick some things you don’t recognize and some things that you do. When you add them to iNaturalist, you will learn about the species that you share your neighbourhood with. Pro tip: taking several pictures from different angles will help the community identify your observations!
Bumble Bee Bonus
As part of our bumble bee habitat stewardship project, the OWC has launched an iNaturalist project that tracks all bumble bees observed in our watershed. We will use this project to host bumble bee bioblitzes in our watershed this year, so stay tuned for more updates!
A screenshot of our iNaturalist project, “Bumble bees of the Oldman watershed”.
There have been 691 bumble bee sightings reported in our watershed since 2011. Twenty-two species have been observed; the most commonly seen are Hunt’s bumble bee, the Nevada bumble bee, and the Vancouver bumble bee.
You can view all of these observations, learn about the species, and add your own sightings at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/bumble-bees-of-the-oldman-watershed
There’s no time like the present
Now that you’ve finished reading this blog, step outside for a minute and take a look at the plants, animals, and fungi around you. Maybe you will see some familiar organisms, and maybe you will learn about something new. We look forward to seeing you out there!
OWC’s bumble bee project is financially supported in part by the following grants:
Habitat Stewardship Program for Terrestrial Species at Risk (Government of Canada).
Watershed Restoration and Resiliency Program (Government of Alberta)
