The Anchor Point beach, near where I live, is the only spot in the entire area where I have found Schizoplax brandtii chitons.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/578474
I also have a place in my backyard, under an old dog food bag, where there is a very large amount of Trechus chalybeus beetles. It seems to be jst the right habitat for them.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/232809
Both species only have about twenty observations on iNat so far.
wouldnāt be so secret if I told you here :p
Yes I do.
I have a few spots in/near my city where I can see rare orchids at a certain time of year. Two of them on a hill bordering the city I discovered entirely on my own, Spiranthes spiralis on a small old field remnant, and Orchis pallens on a stony hillside near the top. Some research on GBIF and in old papers did not seem to list the species occurring there. I emailed the local state botanist who also was unaware of them growing there and after checking their secret database said it even extends the known range slightly northward for one - but he seemed rather uninterested otherwise (the entire hill is private property and thereās no chance of protecting anything, so itās actually kinda sad still finding rare species there).
A third orchid spot Iām particularly fond of is in a dark forest near the top of the neighbor hill to the above where I found my first ever Epipogium aphyllum, and in full bloom, in 2023 - after finding a vague location description (ānear the bear caveā) in a 100-year old botany paper describing new plant finds in Salzburg at the time.
I trekked up there several times this year as well but there was nothing - and some orchid enthusiast I met elsewhere told me he had heard about that spot, but the flowers only come up every 5-10 years and I was really lucky to find one in 2023.
For herpers itās basically every productive spot - some are guarded for selfish reasons, but many are guarded for altruistic reasons, because there are herpers out there who leave a terrible mess behind. And for a third reason - there are abandoned pools that trap herps with no hope of escape. Sharing it widely would help reduce mortality, but it being private property could land everyone in trouble if it were more widely known.
Otherwise, I donāt intentionally keep āmyā spots secrets, it just happens that fewer people have interest in the organisms that I do : ā (
Yes, and I will definitely tick the āobscure locationā box for these due to the risk of poachers. Leichardtās grasshopper is a very rare very colourful grasshopper. It is found on one also uncommon plant which is quite distinctive and can be found in stone country. I donāt know if people will poach insects but I donāt want to chance it.
Ditto for certain plants. Some of the carnivorous plants are worth obscuring because people have been known to dig them up and take them home.
i need to upload them, but theres a bit of the creek by my house where the otters live
and just my whole yard at literally any time if i want to upload more turkeysā¦
Everybody does have a few. The trouble is when you visit one of them again after some years, and you find out it has been burned, cleared, drained or plowed, as it was UNPRODUCTIVE.