I’m more likely to write about night­life than wild­life, but I do like urb­an obser­va­tions in gen­er­al, so Pro­ject Noah caught my eye. It’s a web­site and shiny new free iPhone app that lets people track, record and find out about the spe­cies in their envir­on­ment.

 Project Noah - spottings in Wellington

Not sur­pris­ingly, I’ve mostly recor­ded very urb­an spe­cies (that’s not quite what Baudelaire meant by “the bot­an­ist of the pave­ment”), but it could be very use­ful for map­ping rare plants, spiders, invas­ive spe­cies or even neigh­bour­hood cats, if you were so inclined. It’s all pretty new in this neck of the woods, so there’s only my lightly-informed spot­tings of scrappy road­side cab­bage trees and frightened little pen­guins to look at, but if more Wel­ling­to­ni­ans get involved it could become a really use­ful guide to loc­al flora and fauna.