WHEN: April 25-26, 2025 (See schedule below)
WHERE: Circle Acres Nature Preserve
DONATION: $7+ Sliding Scale
You donation support the continued ecological restoration work by Ecology Action at Circle Acres. Become a Sustaining Supporter
Get ready for a wild day of exploration and discovery at Circle Acres Preserve as we celebrate 20 years of ecological restoration and community science! As part of the City Nature Challenge, we’re inviting nature lovers, fungi fanatics, and community scientists of all ages to join us for a full day (and night!) of biodiversity fun.
🔎 What’s in store?
(MEET AT THE PARKING LOT A GROVE BLVD. SEE MAP FOR PARKING HERE)
FRIDAY
🐦 8:00 - 10:00 AM: Birdathon with Travis Audubon – Tune in to the songs and sights of our feathered friends Register Separately Here.
SATURDAY
🍄 10:00 AM: Youth Nature Club – (Ages 5-15) Let’s learn how mushrooms grow and help plants thrive.
🐜 4:00 PM: Leaf Cutter Ant Walk – Follow these tiny but mighty ecosystem engineers on their foraging trails.
🧬 6:30 PM: Mushroom DNA Walk – Explore the hidden world of fungal genetics and see how we ID species.
🦋 8:00 PM: Mothing – Discover the secret nightlife of moths as we attract them with light traps.
🔦 8:00 PM: UV Night Walk – Find glowing fungi, scorpions, and other nocturnal wonders under ultraviolet light!
🌱 Why join?
Help document biodiversity for the City Nature Challenge
Celebrate 20 years of Circle Acres with hands-on activities
Connect with local ecologists, mycologists, and conservationists
Mushrooms snacks! Enjoy beverages generously donated by Athletic Brewing.
Prizes and backpack giveaway from Patagonia.
Enjoy a community-driven event in a unique urban nature preserve
Come for the science, stay for the adventure! Bring your curiosity, a camera for observations, and a sense of wonder. 🌍✨
ABOUT THE UV NIGHT WALK
We will explore the diverse, nocturnal ecosystem of central Austin with UV flashlights and cameras to look for mushrooms, night pollinators, birds, glowing plants, lichens and more. This walk will highlight fungi’s role in transforming a former dumpsite into a thriving urban forest. Learn how fungi is entangled in the forest helping plants gain water and nutrients, creating the pigments that give flowers their beautiful colors, to helping plants communicate with pollinators. We will have UV flashlights. Guests will learn how to look for, photograph and be community scientists in adding fluorescing organisms to the iNaturalist project. Learn more here about how some plants, mushrooms, lichens and insects have evolved color patterns that are visible in the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic light spectrum, which humans cannot see but many insects, birds and animals can see.
Bring your own 365nm UV flashlight or purchase one from us and pick-up at the event.
CREATE YOUR OWN BIOBLITZ
Anyone can participate individually or put together a bioblitz in your neighborhood or own backyard. Choose a park in your neighborhood and then meeting up with outdoor enthusiasts and showing them how to ID flora, fauna and funga using the iNaturalist app! We will be competing against other cities to photograph and observe biodivesity. Download the app and check out this page on how to use.
ABOUT CITY NATURE CHALLENGE
Started in 2016 as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the City Nature Challenge (CNC) has grown into an international event, motivating people around the world to find and document wildlife in their own cities. Run by the Community Science teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), the CNC is an annual four-day global bioblitz at the end of April, where cities are in a collaboration-meets-friendly-competition to see what can be accomplished when we all work toward a common goal.