Best way to organize a species wish list?

How do you all keep track of species you really want to find/see (assuming you do, of course). I’ve often used the favorites system to mark observations in my area of things I’d like to find one day, but it’s not searchable, and sometimes I just want to fave a great picture of something I’ve already seen, so it all gets mixed together.

I know a few people who keep spreadsheets, but as a more visual person who can’t remember the names of anything half the time, that hasn’t been ideal for me either.

I was considering starting a project of wishlist taxa that I can then remove species from as I find them, but it seems a bit weird to automatically add other people’s observations to a project that’s only useful to me personally.

How do you do it?

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I draw them, both digital and physical examples. I’ve done some fro the neon rainbowfish, razorbill, and great grey shrike

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Old list type is the great way to keep track of taxa, it won’t show specific observations you like, but you can create different lists for different localities, so it’ll be easily searchable.

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You can use the iNat lifelist. Here is the link for yours. You can select the taxonomic group and regions of interest on the left and top sections of the page. To look for another user you’ll need to change the user’s name in the url directly.

Amael

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I am using a system of folders in the bookmarks and drag species (often iNat observations I stumble on) into the corresponding folders (eg common, lokal species, arthropods, birds from continent a, birds from continent b). You need to think about a good system that makes sense to you, so you find the right species again.

When I have some free time, I open all tabs in a particular folder and inspire myself for the next outing!

I also have a spreadsheet with seasons, so I don’t miss the flying season of beetle X.

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I use spreadsheets and iNaturalist lists both. Spreadsheets include species not recognized by iNaturalist (mostly where POWO and Weakley’s Flora of the Southeast disagree)

This isn’t so much for visual people, but I use a Google Doc/spreadsheet for most target lists. For a given area of interest, I’ll create taxon headings and alphabetically list included species observed within the area on iNat. Once I’ve observed the species within that area, I will denote it (indent, asterisk, fill cell, etc.). The result is a list of all the biota reported in an area and the (percentage of) species that I still need to observe. Advantages of the Google Doc format are that I can access them when in the field without service for targeted observation and compare against all observed taxa when
trying to ID an unfamiliar individual.

I also create iNat lists, but these tend to be reserved for long-term “bucket list” type lists

if it’s just a collection project, i don’t think people would notice that you’re adding their observations to your project, unless they join your project as members.

yup. once you have a list of taxa, you can filter easily on those lists. for example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?list_id=4347551 would get animal and fungi observations based on a list that contains Anamalia and Fungi.

in some cases, you can sort of make it searchable. for example, here are just the bird observations in your favorites (as of right now):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=3&verifiable=any&id=26717973,107282626,107283766,107167872,107083624,106731386,106701622,106223117,37218493,57006661,106084346,105929591,102558684,105876426,105860594,105860593,105526579,65999279,22119801,105446243,105446145,105122094,105001209,80691526,23910715,90418053,10185132,104779758,104155463,104689477,12722787,21651,86950758,7597654,3766441,104323472,104350760,104141883,104085566,73758967,549547,1540655,101443518,7000126,4865560,103827846,85872565,91455385,88564806,22156697,63930192,31914523,5094667,27933072,7173782,73819506,92119864,103139036,103340128,10142638,19961408,44062400,19783706,46687825,103230421,9626663,103083369,103072054,102146679,103067583,98542560,99308907,215340,91924563,35097847,68967630,102756193,14520337,1139082,102693913,102678257,101452326,601357,102448393,71099783,102396563,102213122,102389018,1719833,1719799,724118,4677510,39396617,15333669,9464981,99198360,24977545,8862493,22642810,101988106,69245238,40056917,10005532,97733449,86680668,100166611,19328270,102037722,40336954,590244,68933451,101447875,37065511,95827343,101801389,52211771,74361887,101594632,101508683,101506940,101179871,100727998,100663930,100664742,100127846,99934475,89839530,64964001,97901775,28139748,83668985,83748930,83231476,51979455,67696499,3780862,69848283,71818798,71898038,72239132,79238296,73866129,77713199,77932295,78135709,78000765,75855653,76638589,77714481,77630307,77207447,76775239,76776325,75703665,75349657,35007696,75005683,74906585,74545759,74707695,74580637,74396766,73906229,73822841,73705357,73705542,73705742,73392212,73180230,1253027,72691367,72553945,72665574,72506617,72426071,72424742,68769231,67986978,71780396,71855906,71841084,53441185,53517460,22994005,11504333,71106998,71039112,70990056,70926140,66034756,70648840,70535435,70509711,70509360,6567682,70114774,70125516,70072850,70076329,70017487,69973698,67255919,69964973,69840779,20048069,69701202,19164554,43961944,69185807,68216467,69188082,68785575,68609693,68609554,68585763,68466364,67490955,68244760,68248178,68248354,67468725,68017769,67949602,67897510,67507826,67502369,31088913,31088608,5260300,47367417,67037292,66947594,66849183,53769496,49343193,58744582,60453448,65844327,66117073,55109720,41150021,41149082,41106491,41091817,40944859,40936971,40927698,40884715,5032202,39871374,39481132,36572987,19747472,19747478,19747479,19747480,29820097,20797212,19559091,38594818,38594837,38484448,38411311,38381420,38312494,38250507,38182772,38172799,38172809,38110288,25031516,12806506,37764949,20195845,19177290,37670056,37620034,37597950,37392583,37548428,37157258,37150662,37048352,35916569,33284676,36636953,36487641,36387349,1839785,36246434,35987736,36146516,35941205,35843102,35833102,35398093,5773183,26308049,34232041,34106921,30117317,33876935,32508774,9374457,32726286,5890862,32432407,32359409,32365581,32318445,32091636,32138711,31650898,26390542,31038005,31029540,30579683,29798577,29754238,29757586,29739397,29669432,29671734,29718249,29685060,29534800,29476612,29384800,29329932,28658949,28543667,28341889,28039965,26733993,27614137,27601500,27482834,24484684,3505029,22537873,22537901,22351939,21817319,21470246,21438367,21198325,20991249,20964502,20936881,20814521,20763292,20515298,20378408,19838302,20168657,19930653,19922623,19710482,19682160,19291179,19265030,19216567,19154856,19109660,18871368,18743053,18729171,18668106,18560962,18339945,18234039,17608057,17397517,17248478,17219725,17231296,17053139,17049218,16679623,16676809,5832760,16343820,16320925,16060366,15305668,15991527,15962999,15351304,15351119,13528947,13496404,13212935,13130965,13003653,12798413,14350745,14060654,14002182,13687592,13622998,13598449,11607427,13497245,13478471,13472034,13198365,13136789,13001607,12788948,12731191,12697564,12503412,12468498,12406825,12310286,12146057,12021248,11965575,11952038,11844951,11451388,11409429,11420375,11281368,10892929,10723513,10600688,5443393,10482930,10303278,10175751,10096366,10046946,4315183,9333171,9989455,9971579,9970666,9916283,9809002,9395634,9806770,8289926,9806417,9759982,9736006,9749480,9747518,9747092,9654089

… that said, this approach definitely doesn’t make a distinction between:

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