During the night before my job interview in Whitewater, Wisconsin, I saw an enormous, mean-looking varmint outside my motel. Yow! Since then I’ve had a couple of woodchucks trapped and relocated, and recently I’ve seen an opposum eating under a bird feeder. I’m not a nature-hater, but I’m much happier just watching birds, believe me.
Do you see any critters around you? Well, you can participate in “citizen science” by reporting your sightings at the Wisconsin NatureMapping web site, which is sponsored by Beaver Creek Reserve’s Citizen Science Center, the Ecological Inventory and Monitoring Section of the Wisconsin DNR, and Applied Data Consultants. You have to create an account (it’s free), even just to view the map of sightings reported by others. To report data there’s online training. Then to report a sighting or view the map, select a category (mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians), and then a specific critter, e.g., “Skink, Common Five-lined.”
