I’m giving a talk to a local Audubon society tomorrow and I’d love to hear stories from birders who started out with eBird and then came to iNat. Do you use iNat for birds at all, or do you stick with eBird (which is much better for counting and listing birds)? Has iNat encouraged you to notice non-…

How I got here: I actually ended up here because of Squirrel Mapper. At the time, I was trying to get involved with citizen science. I’d been helping ID squirrels on their website and I was looking for how I could contribute my own squirrel pictures to the project. I joined eBird two years earlier,…

I have an ebird account, but I found ebird a bit too daunting. It seems like it’s more for the serious birder, someone who will count each house finch in a flock of 12 and who will stand stationary for an hour or so with binoculars and a camera lens the size of a toddler, versus a casual like me who…

[image] tiwane: Has iNat encouraged you to notice non-birds while you’re out? Does learning other taxa improve your birding at all? I do some oil painting of landscapes and the like so I think I just take notice of trees and other things that aren’t birds for that reason. I’m not looking to I…

I first discovered iNat shortly after starting eBird. I remember during those first weeks/months of birding thinking how I was counting all the birds around, why not the other animals I’m seeing. So I remember googling something to the effect of “eBird for other animals”. And it took off from there. …

I think at first, I used iNaturalist more than eBird because it seemed a bit easier to upload observations on. I do like using iNaturalist for birds especially because it can give me exact locations of bird sightings, as opposed to eBird often using a slightly more general location such as a park. S…

Thanks everyone, this is really helpful! I love hearing about everyone’s stories and experiences.

Not a birder but I also got into iNat after PokemonGo lost my interest!

I used eBird since 2014 when I started seriously birding. I joined iNaturalist a couple of years later. It may have been because a local bird survey was going to try to do a survey in the local parks using iNaturalist. When the pandemic hit, there was nothing to do except go to the parks in the lat…

Too late for your talk, Tony, but a few additional comments. I mostly use eBird for birds, and iNaturalist for other groups, but iNat has some useful features relevant to birding. It’s great for recording interactions (although it could be even better ), so I will often use it to record an insect a …

I’d love to hear how the talk went. I began with iNat during the pandemic, and I mostly observed plants I became curious about during my hikes and trail runs. That spiraled into getting my California Naturalist certification, which … Spiraled into becoming a birder and joining EBird. Now I use t…

Birders: how did you start using iNat?

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Birders: how did you start using iNat?

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