New milestone (700 species observed!) + a few ideas for the rest of our final day

Good afternoon everyone - I just hopped on our project page while listening to a meeting for work, and saw that we have observed exactly 700 species!! Congratulations on reaching another amazing milestone!

I have been keeping an eye on observations as they come in, and thinking about what we're missing and how we might squeeze in a few more species before the end of the day. I thought I'd float a couple more ideas in case anyone out there doesn't have to work today and has the ability to move around:

1) So far we don't have a beaver documented - I know it isn't easy to catch a beaver, but they do leave lots of evidence of their presence behind! If anyone knows of a lodge/dam or even a tree that has been obviously chewed by a beaver, that would be sufficient to include the species on our project.

2) There are lots of springtime mushrooms that haven't appeared yet - we don't have a lot of control over the precise conditions that bring mushrooms, but if anyone knows of a great mushroom-hunting location, please reply to this post and put it in the comments as a suggestion for someone's afternoon hike! Splitgills, witch's butter, orange jelly spot, oyster mushrooms, inkcap species and barometer earthstars are a few examples of mushrooms we don't have yet that people have observed in our area in previous Aprils.

3) Pests and home-dwelling insects count too - my coworker made a joke about taking pictures of rats, cockroaches and bedbugs in Chicago, which got me thinking that we don't have any of those yet! This is, of course, a good thing but I thought I'd mention that these species are all eligible if you are unfortunate to encounter them!!

4) Don't forget about pathogens - if you see a plant disease or fungal infection, we want to see that too! Oftentimes the weird spots and growths on leaves or bark are evidence of entirely separate species - here are a couple examples from yesterday:

Mountain laurel leaf spot fungus: