Cool! Your English is pretty good!
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@diegoalmendras Your story just reminded me of a similar experience with orcas. When I was young I went deep sea fishing in the San Juan Islands with my parents. Orcas arenāt rare in that area but we had a close encounter with a pod. We were in a 16ā Boston Whaler and the male of the bunch was enormous next to our tiny boat. I asked my mother to take a picture or let me have the camera to take one. She literally told me that she would buy me a postcard because it was āthe same thing but a better picture.ā I have never forgotten that missed opportunity either. Looking back that was the first epic observation I wasnāt able to document.
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I had an awesome encounter with an otter in my backyard last year. I live on a lake and there is an obvious animal trail along the shore. I have a trail cam set up to catch anything walking on the trail. I had gone out in the middle of the day to get the memory card and I saw an otter a little ways out in the lake. I didnāt have my phone with me. I tried pointing the trail cam at him but it didnāt go off.
As I watched the otter, he watched me. He was swimming on his back and occasionally rolling. He made this huffing/spitting noise at me so I decided to imitate him. We went back and forth making noises at each other for a bit all the while he was coming closer. Eventually he lost interest and swam away. 
I have yet to catch him on my trail cam. I have seen him I think 4 times and only managed one terrible photo with my phone. He was far away and I was facing the sun. His head looks like just another lilypad.
My first sighting I looked out the back window and saw him checking out my canoe that I left at the edge of the water and smelled like fish (I went fishing that morning). He was gone by the time I came back to the window with long-lens camera ready.
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My story is not quite as epic as other in this thread but I still often think about it! I was swimming in the ocean, Flagler Beach Fl, and I found a very small seahorse lazily swimming by. I was able to catch the little guy with my hands. I thought this was amazing since I had never seen a seahorse in real life and especially not at this beach where theres no good habitat for them nearby. I assume it was blown away from its home during a storm. However, I had left my phone in the car this time and did not want to run back to shore, across the beach, out into the street and back all while carrying the little guy out of the water. So I just admired it and let it go and swam on.
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Well, not as epic as some, but I had been up in the foothills above Claremont, CA, documenting some unauthorized trails and photographing spring wildflowers. As I was heading home, I went around a blind corner and came face to face with a black bear who was ambling up the trail! It wasnāt that close, but definitely way closer than I would have come by choice! I tried to make myself look big and slowly back away. Fortunately, the bear was as startled as I was and departed from the trail.
I was carrying my good wildlife camera and lens, but I was so concerned about the interaction with the bear, that I didnāt even think about taking photos until after the bear had gone.
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Good judgment call! Iām fairly certain Iāll meet my end nose to nose with a bear as weāre both zoning out eating blackberries from the same bush. Iām equally afraid of having a heart attack being startled by a ruffed grouse while Iām busy being vigilant for a bear encounter. Also not necessarily epic but I missed an opportunity to photo a grouse with fledglings.
welcome to the forum!
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Nothing epic, but hundreds of undocumented species from all around the places Iāve been, starting with Kandalaksha Nature Reserve where I possibly will never be again, tons of plnts, insects, marine wildlife, and somehow an Eurasian whimbrel, whih I still have no photos, but w saw its head and I thought like hey, it will be an awful photo and nothing too cool about this bird. Right, plus dozens of other birds. I refused to go for one trail and the group saw Red-footed falcon female. Thinking about insects #1 is my years in University where we had to catch a lot of insets and find dead too, there were my missing 2-3 wasp species, cool beetle (I found dead female right on the steps of the building we lived in, and others caught a male somewhere in the fields, the species wasnāt in any guides for the region and we spent a couple of hours trying to find what it was!), cool caught and ided European Wool Carder Bee and hundreds more. So my catches are somewhere in collections probably, but not in my life list. And yes, I probably documented some of them, but my phone with photos for last 4-5 years was thrown away with garbage.
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I regret all the great encounters I had before iNaturalist was even invented! The cougar at noon in the Everglades, 30 years ago. The ocelot coming down a tree in the Amazon basin in Ecuador, 15 years ago. Ditto the tarantula crossing the road in Ecuador. Letās go way back: the Eastern Towhee I saw in my yard when I was a kid, which made me realize thereās more to birds than American Robins, about half a century ago. The Turkey Vulture nest in a cleft in big rocks in Ontario, maybe 45 years ago. The Common Loons calling from that lake in Ontario. The mink chasing a frog under the dock I was dangling my legs off, again in Ontario.
And nowadays, I regret events like the fisher that ran across my front yard (in a town!), when my camera was in the other room. All the birds and basking turtles I see perfectly well with binoculars, but canāt photograph because I still havenāt bought a telephoto lens. All the tiny invertebrates that wonāt stand still long enough for me to photograph them - I donāt even know what they are!
But all of these are still in my mindās eye; I just canāt share them with the rest of you.
Lynn Harper/MassWildlife
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Losing 4 to 5 years of photosānot fun! However, I believe that nothing youāve seen and wondered at is ever truly lost. It personally enriches you. I know now that the flowers and critters I saw as a child have stayed with me. It is a delight to meet them again whether in person or through someone elseās photo.
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Yes! And it stimulates me to capture everything I see now, uh, the only hope is to make iNat servers live forever.)
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My husband prints out some of our favorite nature photos. He says paper is lower tech, but has the potential to last longer than servers.
In the ultimate sense, I believe God made everything and that he notices even when a sparrow falls.
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Agreed.
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I found a Black-whiskered Vireo at KICCO Wildlife Management Area in Polk County, Florida several years ago. Finding that species that far inland is basically unheard-of, and it was an amazing view. The bird was like 10 feet in front of me, perched out in the open, showing his trademark black whisker very nicely.
Anyway, I had grumpily left my camera in my car when I realized Iād forgotten to bring an SD cardā¦ only to discover when I got back to my car that there was an SD card in my little mini camera the whole time. I could have just transferred it over and gotten the shot. Needless to say, when I went back with the camera (and SD card), the bird was gone.
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probable mink (I think thatās the mustelid they have) at Anahuac NWR in Texas a year or two ago; ran across the road at sunrise as we were getting there, not a chance for a shot.
Lots of warblers yesterday that were doing cool stuff.
Failed to photograph a really cool, brief interaction between a gar and a snapping turtle a while back (was busy point it out to my kids, snapping turtle basically swam into the gar, they went their seperate ways). No regrets, was cool to see.
Spend enough time out and about youāre going to see stuff and not document it. sometimes it can be a bit of kick in the gut to not get proof of something cool youāve seen, but I usually just feel happy to have seen it/shown it to my kids.
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Same situation here - cougar ran in front of the car while we were in central Utah
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Most memorable ādang it, Iām driving - no cameraā moment was just outside of Bryce Canyon, Utah, when I looked up to see a California condor overhead.
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Welcome to the forum!
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I wonāt say my experience was epic, but on May 2nd my son and I saw an American Mink on the west bank of the Wissahickon Creek, in the Wissahickon Valley. Our guess is it entered a den shortly after we saw it. I posted the sighting despite the lack of a photo. At least we had a good description and the coordinates. Then, May 11th, on the Yellow Trail again in the Wissahickon Valley, a Cooperās Hawk leaped off a perch and soared off to my left. There was time for a good look, but no chance to grab a photo. Both times I watched for a while, hoping to capture a good shot. One day Iāve got to get lucky. Oh, wait. Last year, during the City Nature Challenge, an immature Bald Eagle flew a āfewā yards over the heads of our group of three. That was thrilling for us and others passing by on Forbidden Drive in the Valley. Back then, I got the gift of a few blurry shots. But it would have been epic to get a close up of a large raptor in flight.
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Welcome to the forum!
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These are great stories. They remind me of a short canoe trip my husband and I did in the pre-iNat days in rural Pennsylvania. Along the banks of the Conodoguinet Creek, in three miles in broad daylight we saw three mink at different spots. Definitely mink, as mammalogy was my specialty. I have never seen a mink alive before or since, and I didnāt even have a camera with me to record it. We still refer to that as the Three-mink Day.
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