It’s a bird! It’s a…quail! It’s a California quail (Callipepla
californica)!

Twenty-four hours of serious citizen science is less than 24
hours away. This weekend May 31-June 1, 2008 My Wonderful World and National
Geographic will join the National Park Service and thousands of volunteers,
educators, scientists, performers and others for the second annual Bioblitz.
This year’s 24 hour species-identification race will take place at the Santa
Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in California. Did you know that SMMNRA is the
world’s largest urban national park? Comprising 153,075 acres, it has more area
codes (5) and zip codes (26), including the notable 90210 zip code of Beverly Hills, than any
other unit in the National Park System!

It’s sure to be an outstanding day full of fun, real
science, and awareness-building—especially for those like me who can’t tell a
quail from a crane. I’m particularly excited about a unique blogging
opportunity accompanying the event. Ford Cochran, National Geographic’s
Director of Education Technology, will chronicle the ‘blitz as it unfolds for
the full 24 hours. He’ll feature interviews with participating school kids and
scientists, historical information about the park, photos from the field, and
much more!

To help get the word out and do our part for conservation
awareness, My Wonderful World has made a special arrangement to post select portions
of that content on our own blog. So check the blog Friday through Saturday for
highlights from the Bioblitz. And for those of you serious bio/eco/enviro/
enthusiasts and night owls, be sure to tune your RSS feed to the Bioblitz blog
for late-breaking, minute-to-minute reports from Ford. As always, we welcome
you to join the conversation!