What is your favorite among your own iNat photos? Is there a story to go with it?
These are my favorites, not so much because they are great photos but they please me for one reason or another.
Bhutan Moth
(On a bathhouse wall - it was my most momentous trip, since I’m not much of a traveler)
Sea otters in Capitola
(Just because… Sea otters! they are always fun!)
So much life on a tiny blue stone:
(From my most special trip to Alaska)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/65684956 “just another phlegmatic heron” but in a wonderful ancient highly mixed urban-natural area
That’s really hard, I think overall I’m quite ok with Isabelline Wheatear that was a unique bird and I didn’t expect to see it at all.
From this year I’d choose Great Cormorant cause it’s probably the best bird in flight I got, European Stag Beetle found in leaves after unsuccessful trying of climbing a rock and right before the rain started from the trip when I expectedto focus on mosses but it didn’t happen, Variospora aurantia the lichen I waited to photograph for a year as previously on my trips to Crimea I paid little attention to anything rather birds and plants, this year was totally different even though I was still too lazy.
As special story I chose my first of 2 expeditions to White Sea, I had psychological problems living with 9 other people in the same room for weeks so that year I was’t partiicipating in counting of ducks’ eggs that was going on remote islands for some days between breakfast and lunch, my role was to count birds at one spot each 2 hours so I had a lot of spare time, I went to the sandspit nearby and just was lying there looking at grass and birds, that year Arctic Terns had a colony at this spot, they weren’t afraid of me if I came to the place hiding and were landing on signs with warnings about closed territory of nature reserve. That lonely time was one of the best parts of my life. Sorry for details, would like to read your story about that blue rock, it’s stunning!
For me, it’s definitely two species I was involved in reintroducing to my state. Both of these animals were newly released – that is they were “wild” for perhaps a few minutes when I took the photos, so that might not be exactly fair to count them. But they were pretty special.
Great question!
A few of mine I treasure:
I managed to get this shot of a Sydney funnel-web spider during a BioBlitz I was running last year. Ended up getting it published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
Every Australian will have heard the classic call of an eastern whipbird thousands of times, myself included, but they’re exceedingly difficult to spot; they mostly hang out in really dense undergrowth and their call makes it sound like they’re up in the trees, so you look in the wrong spot. After 15+ years of trying to see one, I finally spotted a pair last year!!! One of the most exciting nature moments I’ve ever had.
This Labium pilosum is the first ever photo of a live specimen
I was on Heron Island in January this year doing some research when I was shown this ancient loggerhead turtle by a tourist as I walked by on a lap of the island while birdwatching. I spent 20 minutes watching her lay her eggs, and then another hour afterwards slowly inching her way back towards the water.
No particular story beyond this shot of two agile wallabies, it’s just a photo that I really like
There are a few, but I’ll go with your example and limit this to three:
1: I photographed this burrowing owl in 2002 just east of the Salton Sea in southeastern California. It was on a memorable road trip I took after a work meeting in La Jolla. I rented a subcompact car and drove a leisurely route to the Chiricahua Mountains east of Tuscon, camping and birding on my lonesome. I really like the last image in the sequence. These are flatbed scanned copies of old prints so the resolution is poor.
2: I photographed the northern pig-tailed macaque in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand where I was staying for a few days as part of my only ever actual around-the-world trip, so memorable for that reason as well as the image itself. The macaque’s expression is clear-eyed and inscrutable. This is also a scanned copy of a print.
3: I’m also fond of this woolly alder aphid. They’re such strange little things. This was a mostly calm, cool October day with occasional gusts. There were hundreds of these things floating around and every time there was a gust it looked like it was snowing.
Consequently all the photos I chose are of butterflies.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13362102 This one took me more than a year to find once it was on my wishlist. That day I remember it was raining so I didn’t have much hope, but then the rain stopped and I saw this guy just drunk on tree sap.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13799899 I had to crouch down next to some dog poop, but other than that I just think its a very nice photo.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/50633467 This one is cropped for the iNat but the full photo’s background shows my local patch and subsequently this guy’s territory. I always see a bunch of these butterflies hilltopping around this area (full photo here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CDL28G7ADjr/).
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/56482030 I was actually out in search of a different sp., and completely forgot that that location was one of the hotspots for the species in this observation. It was a sweltering day, over 30 C and I was fully exposed under the sun (there was barely any shade to be had, except for the large brimmed hat I took with me), climbing some rocks when this guy literally swooped down in front of my face! I didn’t get my target sp. though, but this was well worth the trek.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/56632640 This is a pretty rare sp in Hong Kong. A friend of mine took me to the place where he found it, which actually turns out to be a popular hiking spot for tourists and locals. So we were trying to take photos of this butterfly amidst all the other people taking selfies and pictures of the view. I just find the juxtaposition quite funny, that literally there is a rare butterfly species flying right where they are and no one seems to take notice.
1,4,5 also happened to be lifers.
I’m relatively new, but here are some of my favorites:
1: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/55119765
The perspective of this shot is a neat one!
2: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/59630719
and https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/59006523
I’m a fan of sunburst anemones, and the water was very clear for these shots.
3: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/50311146
Great composition and color for this Eccentric Sand Dollar shot.
4: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/54979747
Wasn’t expecting to see this one, but the pic turned out great.
Definitely these: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35182798 + https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/54929414 . Because I miss them.
Amazing shot for the Labium pilosum photo, and what a neat find!
When I was a child we moved into a dilapidated fixer-upper. At some point we acquired a white rat, and It just lived freely in the house with us while my parents updated and remodeled things. My mom, an ex-nurse, was amazingly chill about the white rat that lived in the kitchen drawers. We were very fond of it. One day we came home from a little trip, and found the poor thing soaked to the waist and scrambling in the toilet. We felt so sorry for it, but it was fine.
Thank you for sharing these lovely memories! I have a similar story. I would have been under 8 years old when this occurred.
We came home to a white rat with red eyes huddled next to the door from the outside to the kitchen. Likely an escape or intentional release; definitely not wild. My mom fed it for a day and then brought it in. It lived in a fish tank with cedar (which is now forbidden in the world of keeping rats!) and was our pet. Name was Rat and the presence of him in the house really bothered my relatives. He ate spaghetti, slept all day and NEVER used his wheel, and lived out the rest of his life with us.
i loved this little bold jumping spider i got to know over the summer, and i got some really good photos of her one day; the last two are some of my favorites.
it’s not the best quality, but i was psyched to get this shot of an African fish eagle mid-landing.
this lioness was blind in one eye and she looked beautiful in the pale evening light. i love the colors.
i sang in a bunch of cathedrals in Scandinavia, but this one in Lund was my absolute favorite–it was old and spooky and gorgeous, and there was fireweed growing from cracks in the exterior.
these red-banded leafhoppers lined up very nicely on a milkweed plant in my yard.
my cousin spotted something catching moths drawn to a landscaping light, and i got a very dark photo of a genet that just looked like a glowing pair of eyes until i brightened it as much as i could!
Sometimes you can see that birds are really just a branch on the dinosaur tree…
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/20923429
Hard to narrow down for pics specifically and not just species I was psyched to catch. But one somewhat in both categories is this Algidia viridata, I have 3/4 of the inat obs, and this particular one is my best focused (Well the first pic) when I upgrade gear finding another and getting even better focus is the aim. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/51188477
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/36148939 is such a basic shot of a slug snake, but still one of the cutest snakes I have seen personally.
I quite like this dung beetle pic https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/28614485
Still no idea what grasshopper this is, but it seemed to enjoy a taste of my backpack when I left it for a while https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/28600476
And limiting it to 5, my recent pics of the leucistic variable oyster catcher, I think turned out somewhat okay. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/66410046
Black metal birds!
Passer diabolicus, the singer of Evil Birbs
Turdus satanicus, bassist of Angels of Thrush Metal
(Not the best photos, but they look so darn funny!)
Oh, it is very difficult to select.
I think, my top favourite is one of night heron with too large prey to handle. The bird was so preoccupied that it did not pay slightest attention to a small crowd of paparacci around it: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35705199
Second one is inca tern - a most incredible bird I ever seen: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35699547
Third would be an unusual boat crew: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35684566
And a beautiful partnership:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/36507481
And the last ones: incredible reptiles of Namibian deserts:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/21694587
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/21695117
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/21694962
And so many many more…