Do you change your iNatting habits during CNC, and if so, how?
During the observation period, do you deliberately observe more? Look in places you’ve never looked before, like under the pots in your garden, or in the dusty corners of your house? (Are there more dusty corners in your house, because you were outside looking under pots?)
Do you post two or three observations from that big boring patch of plant X, instead of one, knowing that it will mean more work for identifiers? Or do you only post observations of things that are really interesting to you?
When identifying, do you still spend time poring over observations and
consulting guides to figure out those tricky IDs? Or do you just skip them and move on to easier ones, knowing that the hard ones will still be there in the “needs ID” pile, later?
Do you still take the time to write comments explaining why something is Species X and not Species Y, or that houseplants should be marked Not Wild? Or do you figure that observers won’t see your comments, or even care, if they do?
And finally, do you still spend too much time in the forum, when you know perfectly well that you could be identifying?
Note to self: The clock is ticking! Get back to work!
I spend a lot more time out making observations (and I’m out making observations quite a bit the rest of the year, too). I try to make observations of organisms like ants and slugs that I don’t usually photograph the rest of the year (but I didn’t get either an ant or a slug during the CNC). I make Casual observations of organisms like birds, when I don’t bother with Casual observations the rest of the year.
I spend even more time IDing than at other times. I try to ID my local Unknowns during the CNC ID period. If I know something is captive or cultivated, I mark it so during the CNC, but also at other times. I will leave messages, especially for newer observers, when they have several photos in an observation, each of a different organism. I don’t usually leave messages about captive/cultivated; I just mark them so. I often work most of the time on the easy-to-ID and very common species in terms of IDing for the CNC, just to move all the Red Trilliums/Eastern Skunk Cabbages/Dwarf Ginsengs/Yellow Trout Lilies/etc., etc. out of the way for other identifiers.
My house always has dusty corners and, luckily, I don’t live in a CNC area, so I don’t have to photograph all those spindly spiders in my basement. ;-)
I remember in 2023 I did. I specifically visited multiple locations on foot looking for things to make observations of. Even though it was raining, I continued on anyway! In the end, I had produced 49 observations.
And in 2023 and 2024, I really observed anything I could find, both common and uncommon species. This year, I took a more conservative approach and focused on things I hadn’t observed before, like overlooked small insects.
I hurt my foot a few weeks ago, so I couldn’t do much walking. That’s probably the main reason for the change.
In previous years, I tried making as many IDs as possible, but this year I put more emphasis on IDing uncommon species or species in under-observed areas instead. I wanted this year’s CNC to uncover something not seen in the CNCs before, so I shifted gears. This did mean I had to learn how to ID many new species, I thought that was more rewarding for me than playing the numbers game. I’ll get around to the mass of common species observations later on. There are quite a few identifiers handling them now.
I considered going out and getting a ton of observations, but I was out of town for half of the CNC and then had a wedding, so I wouldn’t say I did that much at all.
This is the first year I participated at all. I was unaware of Global project for those of us far from a city and farther yet from participating city.
The weather wasn’t prime for observing, especially high winds in a forested area.
My id count was low due to weather and early spring. My skills are lower in early spring, I’m slow!
So I’ve tried to do ids for the nearest participating CNC, as it’s local enough I should know the basic observations.
Honestly, I avoided CNC in the past in part because of the forum… so much to do, so many complaints, so unsure if I’m helping or in the way… I’m ignoring the blather this year and bumbling through.
No, I don’t do any of that. I’ve come to view the CNC as undesirable gamification.
I use iNat as my digital field notes for the things I find interesting. I ID others’ observations to see what others are finding and help them know what they found.
I made more of an effort this year to photo a variety of organisms since I had time over the 4-day CNC period. My focus was still mainly on birds and other vertebrates which reduces the number of observations you can make in the given time. If I really wanted to be at the top of my city’s leaderboard I would’ve focused just on plants, which don’t fly or run away from you. Plants allow you to rack up more records quickly. Maybe next year I focus on botanizing.
I still don’t like the idea you can count observations of cultivated plants. Seems like cheating.
I’m more likely to post common species that I already have observations for during CNC that I would maybe skip over otherwise. Some years I also take more time on my daily walks for observing but unfortunately, I didn’t have much time for that this year. I typically only ID on weekdays but did a little over the weekend to try to keep up with the massive increase in observations.
Echoing similar sentiments as others in this thread, during CNC I was definitely more liberal with what I chose to “formally” observe. Common plants and critters I would otherwise pass over, as an example. Gotta get them numbers up!
I re-observe some of the common taxa I wouldn’t normally observe anymore to get a higher species count, and I try to only upload one observation per species. (Only exception is if I get really good photos of multiple individuals or find something exceptionally cool or rare).
I also try to not upload any stuff like blurry photos that are hard to ID (the exception being Chrysididae because I love those) because during CNC most of my observations seem far less likely to get any IDs.
The latter, yes. 1/4 of the Albuquerque CNC uploads are zoo animals and garden plants, so I literally don’t have time to explain on each one if I want to make a dent.
I ended up spending the entire weekend inside doing copyright flags. I’d have liked to be out observing but it was upsetting me to see so much garbage piling up on the site, and I knew if I didn’t work on it as it was happening, it’d be even worse to deal with later.
That’s very commendable. However, there will always be junk on the website to deal with and for me it was a beautiful spring weekend that demanded my camera and I be outside.
I stopped uploading my backlog of observations and will continue in uploading after the waters clean up a bit. I did a few observations on the last evening, not to stay completely away. And now my tennis elbow definitely worsened from all the pressing X and rejecting nonidentifiable brambles and roses (but I left those that were CV ID’d as Rosa canina if not obviously wrong, there are too many of them and many are correct, even if cannot be confirmed).
I observed nothing.
Will ID as much as I can - of what feels worth my time and effort. Encouraging to get feedback from taxon specialists and watch the mountain of obs melt slowly to Needs ID, then to RG.
I do not do more observing or IDing as I am anyways on my personal limit for both.
However, for the time of the CNC I do ID a bit differently. The main difference is the age of the observations I ID. I usually do only rarely ID most current observations but much more often dig through observations that are some years old. Until sunday I go through the more recent needs ID of the current CNC and I try to get to the observations for which I can have the most impact for species counts (so not really on just agreeing terms which I otherwise do not shy away from as I love pushing observations out of the needs ID pile if I can, but more on the suggesting finer IDs end)
I only go outside with the intent of making observations during CNC. In the “off-season”, I only make observations when I see something that looks interesting or I don’t know much about.