About the Group

The Toronto Wildlife Group on Flickr is: an experiment in natural history observation; the monitoring of a local environment by locals interested in natural history; a database of wildlife observations that can be used for a number of purposes; and something yet to be distinguished.

At one level, it acts to be a place where those interested in wildlife photography can share our observations. At another level, it reminds us that there is, indeed, a thriving natural world in our city. At yet another level, it can act as a powerful memory tool to track the seasonal ebbs and flows of the common and not-so-common wildlife found in Toronto.

Group Guidelines

Some more information about the group guidelines:

Identification

Photos added to the pool should be identified via tags. This may be more difficult for some classes of organisms than for others. If you need help ID an organism in a photograph, I suggest the ID Please group. IDing to common name, in most cases, is fine. However, if you can provide more specific information about the organism’s ID, that is better. The golden standard would be a genus and species name.

Fish: common name (e.g. Chinook Salmon). ID help: Ontario fish biology & identification

Amphibians: common name (e.g. Spring Peeper). ID help: Ontario frogs & toads, Key to the amphibians of Canada

Reptiles: common name (e.g. Dekay’s Brownsnake). ID help: Key to the reptiles of Canada

Birds: common name (e.g. American Goldfinch). ID help: Bird fact sheets, Hinterland Who’s Who

Mammals: common name (e.g. Striped Skunk). ID help: Mammal fact sheets, Hinterlands Who’s Who

Worms: to common name of class (e.g. earthworm). ID help: on-line key to worms found in Canada

Mollusks: to common name of class (e.g. snail, slug). ID help: key to freshwater macroinvertebrates (PDF alert)

Crustaceans: to common name of class (e.g. crayfish). ID help: key to freshwater macroinvertebrates (PDF alert)

Spiders: to common name of order (e.g. spider, harvestmen, mite)

Insects: to common name of sub-order (e.g. dragonfly, damselfly, true bug) ID help: Insects of Ontario, BugGuide

Geotagging

There are two ways to geotag in Flickr:

1. though Flickr’s organize page
2. with the use of a geotag bookmarklet (get it)

I suggest using the bookmarket. By adding it as a favourite you just need to click on the bookmarklet (a fancy name for a small program that runs from a bookmark) to update the location of the photo. When you do this, a searchable and dragable google map appears on the photo page. By adding an arrow where the photo was taken, the information is updated.

Wildlife

The organisms included in the pool should be non-domesticated. Non-native species are welcome. While a photograph of a Norway Rat would be a welcomed addition, a photo of your pet rat should not be included. Escaped exotics and feral populations are questionable additions (but, in practise, may be difficult to distinguish). For example, some domesticated geese hybridize with wild geese. Currently, I think these should be included in the photostream.

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