We were a birder and ebird user before learning iNat exited.
Yes. Did a lot of iNatting during the past 16 days. Uploaded 118 observations of 73 species, 30 of which were birds. 11 of the observations included audio. The ability to identify with audio helps keep iNat relevant for us because seen-only would limit us. Overall, we have observed 1,430 species on iNat, only 250 species are birds.
Yes. We started iNatting during the pandemic in order to learn more about non-birds. It was summer, the birds had stopped singing as much and the trees were all leafed out, and travel outside the county was discouraged. So we started like many iNatters and started with what trees are in our yard, what plants, and what organisms interact with those. Sometimes now we will go out to iNat specifically and won’t list on ebird. We might report to ebird (incidental, they call it) any infrequent, rare, or noteworthy bird. In this forays, typically in summer, we visit prairies to look at plants and for non-bird animals.
For us, maybe a little. Knowing which birds are more likely to be see in a conifer (ie Pine Warbler) provides assistance in bird identification. Knowing what a bird eats and then finding that organism can make it more likely to observe a target bird. Mostly, learning other taxa has increased our engagement with the natural world so that when we venture out, we are going to find something to observe whether or not bird activity is high.
Yes. iNat has more annotation choices, more consideration for evidence, more location uncertainty. And then speicfic quirks, like trying to reorder photos on iOS mobile. Even selecting the most refined level of taxonomy for each iNat observation is a step beyond ebird listing. And iNat is interactive, with outsiders being able to comment on the observation and the potential for dialogue. On ebird, leaving a comment on your own checklist (ie the weather or trail conditions) or on individual species recorded (ie a crow was divebombing the red-tailed hawk) is intended for personal notation or to guide other birders. The notion that someone can reply to your observation or your comments on their observation for us is both potentially exciting (because we can learn, share awe, encourage) and frightening (accusing us of disagreeing with the observer if we identify to a higher taxonomic level without disagreeing because it’s the best we know, or unrelated comments about our pronouns).
ebird doesn’t have this interactivity online, though because of the concept of hotspots and the public nature of the platform (and chasing other people’s reports, especially of rarities), birders wind up at the same locales often and can get to know each other in person. We have not run into other iNatters ever, except ones we already know from birding. This social aspect, along with the forum, of iNat might be one of the biggest differences in the platforms outside the obvious that ebird is about birds and iNat is about all life. The other difference is that for rare birds, ebird has volunteer reviewers to confirm or not confirm rare encounters, while all other non-rare ebird reports do not require descriptions or evidence or confirmation.
We tend to upload audio and photos to ebird somewhat infrequently, and then often only when it’s a rare/infrequent bird (evidence is often required or just really helpful for getting rare birds confirmed by reviewers on ebird) or exceptional quality photo or audio. We do tend to double post media to ebird and iNat.
Good luck at the talk, Tony!
