St. George Rainway Winter Bioblitz

Green rainwater infrastructure uses nature and engineering to help capture, convey and clean polluted urban rainwater runoff. These systems can also provide many environmental and social benefits to a community, like increased biodiversity.

The newly built St. George Rainway uses plants and soils in a series of rain gardens to help manage polluted rainwater. This newly added green corridor provides important food sources and habitat for a variety of wildlife, including pollinators, birds, small mammals, and insects.

In 2022, prior to building the Rainway, we hosted a series of community science campaigns to measure baseline biodiversity. Using the application iNaturalist, we collected data on the birds, plants, trees, insects, and mammals that used St. George Street. Now we want to measure how biodiversity may have changed since constructing the Rainway. In 2022, we saw 23 unique species of birds on the Rainway. Can we beat that count in 2026?

Join us for a bioblitz on Saturday February 14 from 9am – 11am with a focus on identifying birds!

Whether you are a biodiversity expert, or a beginner hoping to learn more, you can be a part of our community science team! We will be joined by a local bird expert who will lead a brief talk on the types of birds we might expect to see and how to ID them, before setting off to count biodiversity species along St. George Street. This bioblitz will emphasize birds, but we will also be counting other flora and fauna in the neighbourhood as we see it.

This event is also being hosted as part of the Great Backard Bird Count, where people come together from across the world to watch and count as many birds as they can see. These observations help scientists better understand global bird populations before one of their annual migrations.

Bring binoculars if you have them!

Accessibility Details

• An electronic device (such as a smart phone or tablet) with a camera, access to the Merlin app and/or the iNaturalist app, and data enabled is recommended, but not required for the activity. Paper forms will be available for recording data if required.
• People of all ages are welcome to participate.
• The event will take place outdoors. Please dress for the weather.
• The activity will take place at Guelph Park and along a residential street. There are sidewalks and curb ramps, though they are often uneven. There are no places to sit on site. The activity can be modified to include more or less walking and to avoid steep hills as participants are able. The maximum walking distance would be approximately 1 km.
• There are no public washrooms on site.

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Host or Publisher City of Vancouver Green Infrastructure