The 2021 National Pollinator Week, an annual international event created by the Pollinator Partnership, took place between Monday June 21st through Sunday June 27th.
In celebration of National Pollinator Week, the Cheshire County Conservation District & the Sullivan County Conservation District partnered up to celebrate with an iNaturalist Pollinator Bioblitz! A bioblitz is an event that focuses on finding and identifying as many species as possible (in this case, pollinators) in a specific area over a short period of time to get a snapshot of an area’s biodiversity.
New Hampshire is home to a broad diversity of more than 100 species of wild bees across different habitats. These include 70+ species of sweat bees, 30 species of leafcutter and mason bees, 5 species of carpenter bees and 10 bumblebee species. Additional pollinators identified include beetles, flies, ants, wasps, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds!
Thank you to those who participated! We hope you enjoyed using iNaturalist and that you will continue to use it. There are many projects on iNaturalist that your observations can be contributed to and it's a great way to keep a list of what you've seen in your backyard or even on vacation.
If you’re unfamiliar with how iNaturalist works, we’ve got you covered! Check out this video for a full tutorial on how to use iNaturalist here
Our bioblitz had a total of 155 observations, made by 26 different observers in Cheshire & Sullivan County and we identified 86 different pollinator species!
You can check out the full results of our National Pollinator Week Bioblitz here
Below are just few examples of what was observed last month!
We want to do this project again next year for pollinator week, so keep your eye out next June for another fun bioblitz during National Pollinator Week!