What a Day!

We wanted to start out by saying THANK YOU for all your support and participation today! We are blown away that we already have over 26,000 classifications done by 450 volunteers after just one day. We were so excited about the release of this project and are so glad that you are enjoying it just as much as we do. 

We saw a lot of great classifications today, but we wanted to highlight some of our favorites: 

Citizen scientist winthrop_grin was the first to share a photo with a comment on our discussion board this morning.  His sharp eye noticed some sort of canid with its head bent down on the right side of the image. It's hard to tell what species it is, but it looks like it's munching away on something. 

Discussion boards not only helps highlight interesting classifications, but they also are great for asking questions. Moderators check the board frequently and are happy to provide their insight.

We saw a lot of great hashtags used today such as #camerastare, #behavior, #canid and #chewwithyourmouthclosed, but the winner of the best hashtag was #unicorn. We had a lot of questions about one-antlered deer appearing in images. This is completely normal, it just happens when male deer don't lose their antlers at the same time. This is very common, so there are sure to be more images featuring these odd-looking deer! StormySees' use of #unicorn is a great way to describe the picture in future classifications.

We had so many interesting finds, but here are just some that we found especially awesome. We loved this find by winthrop_grin of some sort of canid. It is classified as either a wolf or a coyote. It's tricky to tell these two species apart in camera trap images, especially at night. Our plan is to amass a bunch of these coyote/wolf images and then open a new workflow that walks volunteers through the specifics of telling those tricky canids apart. Both species have been sighted in camera trap images at Cedar Creek. 

We were also thrilled to see smansfield's classification of a red fox! It's always a pleasure to see them, and we love the little tracks it leaves in the snow.  

 A lot of winthrop_grin's pictures were featured today, but we just can't help sharing more! This pheasant is awesome. 

Last but not least, check out this image of a turkey trot found by MSCHUSTER! Turkeys are quite common in our reserve, but it's nice to see some together in one shot. 

Thank you so much again for all your hard work today. We can't wait to see what else you find in the images in the future. Happy classifying!