The Friends of Rogers are inviting anyone in Chenango, Madison, and Otsego Counties to get outside from April 26 to 29 to record plants, animals, and insects they see in the iNaturalist app as part of the worldwide City Nature Challenge. (Photos by Dustin Genter of 5th Dimension Photography)

CHENANGO COUNTY — The Friends of Rogers Environmental Education Center is participating in the annual City Nature Challenge for the second year in a row.

The challenge is an international effort to get people outdoors and exploring nature, while also contributing to community science by recording any plants, animals, and insects they see on the iNaturalist app. It's also a friendly competition to see who can record the most observations and the most species.

Friends of Rogers Environmental Educator Ellen Rathbone said because Sherburne is so small, she expanded their area to include Chenango, Madison, and Otsego Counties. Any observations recorded in iNaturalist in these three counties between April 26 and 29 will automatically count toward the area's total for the challenge.

"If everybody comes to Rogers Center and does it at Rogers Center then you’re going to have everybody probably recording and uploading the same species. So that’s why I made it three counties," Rathbone explained. "I expanded it beyond Sherburne so we could get more variety and try to get some more baseline data of what’s out there this time of year in our general region."

Observations can be recorded in iNaturalist using photos or sound recordings. Rathbone encourages taking photos or recordings directly in the app, as it will automatically include location information, as long as the phone's GPS is turned on.