Are there any organisms that seem common and easy to add to your life list, but you seem to never be able to find one?
For me, it’s probably the yellow-bellied sapsucker. Everyone seems to have these cool pictures and sightings, but I have yet to see one.
Are there organisms like that for anyone here?
Mine is the greater glider https://bie.ala.org.au/species/https://biodiversity.org.au/afd/taxa/5e2dc7c9-4cff-485b-9f71-5ed99c0c8d3e
I have seen this threatened species on my land on quite a few occasions. The last sighting was June 2020, a few months before I joined iNaturalist. I have never seen one on my property since, in spite of hours of stumbling through the forest in the dark with a ledlenser torch as
well as setting up trap cameras. I have heard them calling, but never a sighting let alone a photograph. I do have an obs of a greater glider. Sadly a dead one caught in a barbwire fence. This was a long way from my land.
Baltimore Oriole.
Not sure if this counts, but: Sora, but I finally got one after months and months of trying. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/208099876
@caterpillar511 will tell you!
As of right now, I don’t have any nemesis lifers, but it’s only a matter of time! :)
The Red-Bellied Snake, common and everyone says that except I can’t manage to find one.
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is one of mine too! Also Red-Breasted Nuthatch and Common Goldeneye. I also haven’t seen any Gray Foxes.
They love to sun themselves on dirt roads (sadly I know this because I have found dead ones all over my road) and I also found one under some wooden boards I was moving. Good luck finding one, they are common, but they are so beautiful!
The Great Blue Heron used to be mine. I don’t count something as seen until I have a picture of it, and every time I’d find a Great Blue Heron, it’d find me first and fly away before I could get a photo. I saw like seven before I got a photo of one.
Now it’s the Ligated Furrow Bee, the most common thing in my state I haven’t found yet.
Common Grackle. I see them all the time, but have only been able to get a photo very recently.
I learned this just today!
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/276764435
:)
Phyllactinia fraxini-pennsylvanicae. I’ve checked countless ash trees and found no hint of it anywhere. I know it’s out there! there are records from this region! curse you, super faint Phyllactinieae!
what, were you expecting some vertebrate species?
American Lady. 7th most common butterfly/moth observed on Long Island out of 2000+ species. I’ve seen 88 species on LI.
For plants, probably Conopholis americana. I’ve searched 8 times for it and came up empty every time. One of the most observed plants worldwide.
Not necessarily.
Hummingbird Clearwing
White-lined Sphinx
Modest Sphinx
Leafy Spurge Hawkmoth
Carolina Sphinx
Most seen moths in my state, that I have yet to find. I probably miss them while I’m looking for birds, of which Evening Grosbeak would be number one nemesis.
@oksanaetal is correct! Focusing on just vertebrates would be a bit boring, in my opinion. Any organisms qualify!
My nemesis bird is the Eastern Whip bird - I can hear them everywhere when I travel to our closest temperate rain forest, but 18 years of searching one out has netted me a big fat zero.
Until just a couple of months ago, my other nemesis was frogs - not a specific frog, just any species. Growing up in Florida, I saw them by the thousands, but once I moved to AU, no frogs. Finally, while bird watching at a local water treatment plant (also a RAMSAR sight), I spotted my first, and so far, only, frog species, the Southern Bell Frog.
In terms of animals, Spotted Salamanders have eluded me for years- all life stages, never seen. Same goes for an adult copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix). I have only ever seen one live baby and one dead adult, both of those years ago despite them apparently being “dirt common”. I have also never seen a Brown Anole, while rarer in Mississippi than Florida and other states, they are supposedly still common enough that I should have seen one by now.
In terms of plants, my biggest nemesis right now is probably [https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/53038-Drosera-intermedia](spoonleaf sundew), which i have looked for extensively in its native range, but never found. The genus Forestiera has also eluded me. I suspect I have seen Forestiera before and just not recognized what it was.
85 replies on this topic here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-is-your-white-whale/57449
Lizards…
There is at least one type in my area and people post cool pictures.
Never have seen one in my country…
… Another one is “ice bird”. They are around my area, and as I was out observing some years ago, someone from a garden next to the open space, saw me taking pictures and started talking to me about nature and that he had an ice bird in is garden… the neighbours from above, once told me that they saw an ice bird two villages away.
I went to the place where they had seen it a few days later with my dad who loves birds, but we couldn’t spot it…
Yeah, kingfishers are tricky – such beautiful birds, but so difficult to spot, much less photograph. On several occasions I’ve been near water and seen a quick flash of blue that couldn’t have been anything else, but I’ve only managed to get photos once, and that was largely luck.
But you made it! - Great!
The day will come, when I spot one… - Don’t knock when, but I will see one!!