The most observations I have of a single species are 106 observations of the Asian lady beetle. I’ve had INat for around four years now… So at the rate that I’m going at it would take me about 40 years to get 1,000 observations of this species. Has anyone crossed this huge milestone yet?
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The most I have is 306 observations of California Bay… but there is someone who has 4,143 obs of Cylindropuntia fosbergii: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&preferred_place_id=1&taxon_id=321642&view=observers
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check this out :)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=ck2az&verifiable=any&view=species
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I have 1,433 observations of red tailed hawks and 1,245 of osprey. I’m getting close to 1,000 of turkey vultures and mourning doves.
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More than 1000? At least each of the first 25 people with most observations in total have some taxa with over 1000 observations… the top one with 38.697 observations of the bush Larrea tridentata plus 34 other species with more than 1000 observations each…
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Over 38,000 observations of Creosote Bush by one user! :O
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That is amazing!
I currently have 1076 observations of Common Side-blotched Lizards (Uta stansburiana). However, it’s been my main study species for scientific research for nearly three decades. Recently for a paper I had to calculate how many individuals of this species I’ve caught (measured, marked, released) in that time frame and came up with 10,136. The Excel spreadsheet containing all of those captures/recaptures is now over 30,000 rows long.
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The top 5 observers of the House Sparrow:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=13858&view=observers
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I have over 1000 observations of Eastern White Pine, which i kinda observe anywhere i can, the blurry roadside ones from the car are kind of silly and feature in the Road iNatting project, but I do think it is valuable tracking what this species looks like throughout its range. After all Eastern Chestnut was once just as widespread, before it was killed off by chestnut blight. I am close to 1000 Northern Red Oaks, these i make it a point to track because they have interesting environmental correlates in the area, needing warm and dry areas and having strong affinity to south-facing slope and well-drained soils in my part of Vermont. Its leaves change color after other trees and stay on the tree well into Nocember and sometimes longer, so they are easy to see at those times.
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Wow.
Is this the most observations one person has of a single species?
( and …is there a URL to track this metric? )
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… oh yeah.
i have 19k reed, 7k pigeons, 5k eastern gray squirrels, 3k canada geese… i have a few more in the thousands. i observe just whatever i feel like at any given time and a lot of the common things appeal me so i end up observing them a lot, as proven by the obscene numbers.
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Hahah! Another few years of observing squirrels, cardinals, and honey bees, and I’ll get a couple to 1k per species!!! :) Observations · iNaturalist
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I imagine you were looking for personal responses, rather than an answer to your question. That said, the person with the 3rd most observations worldwide has over 38,000 observations of Creosote Bush, and 36 different species for which he has over 1000 observations. Pretty much almost all of the top observers (100,000 and up) on iNat have species with over 1000 observations. However the user with the most species, has only 251 observations of his most recorded species. The more disparity between total higher numbers of observations and lower number of total species, the more likely that will be for a user.
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Very Impressive! It would probably be easier to get to 1000 for some plants, than it is for birds. For example, it wouldn’t be too difficult in any given year for me to find 1000 dandelions - of course I’d have to photograph and post them - but what a bore that would be!
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Not criticizing anyone for taking that many photos of a species and posting to iNat — you can do what you want. But just out of curiosity … why?
I can see if you’re studying a species and want to capture variation among populations. But even then, a thousand or more seems like a helluva lot of effort.
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I’ve confirmed some of those to make them RG as they are in my state. As I recall, the dots pretty well map the range in NM. But no way am I going to look at all 38,000.
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i just take pictures of whatever i feel like when im out. a lot of the time it’s the same things over and over because im drawn to those things over and over. i really like documenting european reed because its invasive and it’s always shocking how bad it is. i think no number of observations could emphasize and truly capture how much of it there is. also a lot of days i don’t do that much outdoors and i just walk a little, and whatever i see is usually common, but that’s also what my interaction with nature for the day is, so i document it. that usually ends up being a lot of squirrels, robins, starlings, grackles, dandelions and other weeds. it just reflects what i encounter in a day, and a lot of days it’s the same things.
frankly it would be more effort for me to not take the pictures because i feel so compelled to document whatever i find interesting and i’m very easily amused by even the very common and abundant things.
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Thanks! For osprey, there are a lot of them in Florida, and sometimes there are 10+ on light poles on certain bridges.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=Aug%204,%202019&place_id=any&taxon_id=116999&user_id=brennafarrell&verifiable=any
Most of my red tailed hawk observations come from observing them across the years in Pennsylvania.