I was looking for images of Bombina orientalis on Google to use as part of an online post about the different Korean animals with ‘shaman’ in their (Korean) common name and came across several photos by pintail. After spending some time exploring the site I realized how amazing it was and signed up for it myself.
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I saw someone mentioning iNat in a discussion on Flickr
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I was hanging out in reddit’s r/whatsthisplant when there was a conversation about online identification apps. Someone mentioned iNat, I checked it out, mind was blown, and I started hanging out here instead.
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Yes, I added an iNat pitch to my Flickr profile page a while back. Don’t know if it has garnered any recruits yet…
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I was invited to lead the mollusk section of a bioblitz, and was required to sign up. Boy am I glad I did!!!
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I love reading these! Searching my gmail account, I see that I sent a link to the Global Amphibian Bioblitz in May 2011 to a friend. However, I don’t think I looked closely enough to “get it”. In April 2012, a different friend forwarded me info about a talk @loarie gave in DC at WWF (edited to add: but I did not attend). In June 2012, I created my iNat account to use the Flickr taxonomic tagging tool to get photos from Flickr to EOL (bypassing iNat completely at the time), using this lovely guidance from @treegrow. (As an aside, I see a report that it’s currently broken). That summer I poked around iNat more and realized how awesome it was, but immediately realized what a huge time sink it would be for me, so I basically didn’t let myself add anything until a few months later when I added a few observations. I felt overwhelmed by my backlog of field work photos that I wanted to add, and that kept me kind of paralyzed for a while and putting it off for “some day when I had more time”. I didn’t really get deep in until 2014, and then it changed the way I see the world.
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Someone had found my personal herp-list site (wildherps.com) and asked if I would be willing to put some of my photos of anole lizards from Florida into this thing called iNaturalist because they were starting a (you guessed it) “Florida Anoles” project and wanted some more data in it. I did so to support their interest in nature, and then got hooked.
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I have worked in various aspects of the computer industry. A few years ago I found out I had cancer, and decided to change things up and do what I wanted to do when I left school… horticulture. I did a level 3 course at the local polytechnic (entry level), and a friend decided that qualified my to help her catalogue the local Botanical Gardens. I followed her around with a clipboard, she called out names, I tried to spell them and mark them on a map… I thought “there has to be an easier way than this”. There was, and I became hooked!
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Yeah, I was about to say, Cullen is missing from the list 
So my story: I was following a page for the UT Biodiversity Collections on facebook, and some of their people were co-hosting a bioblitz over at Village Creek State Park, so they shared the event that Texas Parks and Wildlife (AKA, Cullen Hanks) were hosting. I had always been taking photos of nature and trying to identify what I saw, but usually didn’t get anywhere, or once I figured it out, I just forgot about it. But, a group of people, going out into nature, specifically looking for things to take pictures of?
I went. Using iNaturalist was a requirement since, you know, bioblitz. And I am very resistant to new technologies. But I am also very competitive. And getting to hike around the state park in the middle of the night with frogs everywhere and other people who get excited to see parasitized caterpillars? I was hooooooooked.
And here we are less than 4 years later… Time flies, huh?
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I have been a member of the South African National Botanical Society for years. I read an article in their journal called Veld & Flora about iSpot. I signed up but never figured out how to use the site, but I saw a post on iSpot by Tony Rabelo saying that he would be moving to iNaturalist and that’s how I first found it.
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Other: I found out about iNaturalist via the Encyclopedia of Life in 2012. Then the next year when I got hired to the position I’m currently in, there were vague plans to develop some sort of data recording phone app for a BioBlitz and I was like “wait wait wait, this exists…” :-D
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I heard about the Global Reptile Bioblitz back in Fall 2011 when it was getting started, and wanted to contribute a couple sightings. Then there was a local bioblitz in December 2011 that I went to because @rebeccafay & I were interested in using iNaturalist in our citizen science programs at the Academy. That bioblitz kicked off my steady use of iNat, our use of it for citizen science, and eventually lead to iNat joining the Academy.
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When @carrieseltzer posted the ability to see older stats… I think I came on in the big bump of midsummer 2011… must have been an article published or something. Or some outreach push @loarie did? It was kind of the first of a bunch of step-ups in inat use.
I found my old registration email as well as some long email of feedback i sent to poor Ken-ichi in 2011. I guess some things don’t change…
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I remember in the bad-old-days (last century actually), finding a large spider and wondering whether it was some invasive species. Took it to the local university and finally found someone who would bother looking at it - one look and they distainfully told me it was a common species and muttered something about people should open their eyes and get out more :-( probably right about that too )-:
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I didn’t bother any biologists. Turns out it is a vulnerable species, so maybe I should have.
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I voted “other” because I think it was something I saw in a post on Bug Guide or an insect related blog that brought me here.
For a few years I had been submitting pics, looking for help with ids on sites like BugGuide and BAMONA. But, it was kind of frustrating only being able to submit a few things at a time and having to fill out a form for each submittal. Then, waiting possibly months before anyone would even look at them. I had folders on my computer full of photos I wanted to submit when I had time. I kept lists of things I’d seen on my fridge and in spreadsheets on my computer… although I wasn’t very good at keeping up on it.
I’d keep track of my first of the year sightings of birds which were largely yard birds, but I knew that wasn’t really the type of data that E-bird wanted. They prefer complete checklists of ALL birds seen in a specified place and time.
I had started looking at joining other sites that were odonate or moth specific to get more help… but thought this is getting crazy! Then I came across a blog or message board post about iNat and thought, wow that sounds awesome! I can put up all different species, as many as a want, it will keep a life list, and I can get help with ids, all in one place!
Then I figured I could help with providing ids for others too, even though I’m not an expert. Now it’s one of the sites that I go to at least once a day. Sometimes I just like to browse what other people are seeing in my area. I don’t use Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram…I use iNat. If a potential employer wants to screen my “social media presence”, this is what they’re getting!
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I’ve only been using it for a month so I don’t qualify as “established,” but I found out about it while birding when a couple of the guys I was with kept turning over logs to look for critters. They told me they were doing it for iNaturalist, which they assured me was “awesome” and “actually better in many ways” than eBird.
I’d just discovered eBird (and birding in general) 6 months prior so the idea of an all-encompassing site was intriguing. I discovered iNaturalist that night and immediately fell down the rabbit hole. I’m in deep now and have since gone on a month-long bender to get all my old photos uploaded and catalogued. I think I finally finished going through all my historical material last night. It’s also encouraged me to go out and explore more, so I’ve been taking myself on little day trips around my area to places like the Atchafalaya swamp. It’s been a blast.
I’ve also enjoyed exploring new regions and taxa through the website and contributing IDs where I can. Nice to have such easy access to data on my own experiences, too. I’d kept a life list since I was a kid, but with no social connections to the larger naturalist community it kind of just reached a dead end and never left my personal notebook. So iNat has been kind of perfect for me. And the fact that there’s a chance for my contributions here to be of use to someone is the cherry on top.
Edit: no, I haven’t voted, I’m respecting the “established user” criteria.
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I’m pretty sure it was looking for IDs for pix from a camping trip. I’ve been taking flower pix for ages, mostly focusing on identification (cuz I’m obsessive that way), and using them for holiday gifts, usually in calendars, or applied to anything that didn’t run away fast enough. And I had a few on the walls, but mostly that was all, and the focus was on “calendar-worthy”, so artistic, or at least interesting, in focus, good lighting, etc. Anything that didn’t make the grade was basically a discard. I didn’t delete them, but they just sat there.Tens of thousands of them.
In searching for IDs, some of the pix I found were on iNat, & when I followed the link I became intrigued. As others have said, the more I looked, the more I liked. People to help with IDs! A place that values amateurs! Somewhere to put all my discards as well as my “good” shots! And best of all, they could be useful - Flickr’s fine but it’s for sharing nice pix. I was in heaven: now I have a serious purpose to my photography, I’ve learned how to take good identifiable pix, and it doesn’t preclude aiming for the “artistic” ones.
My graduate degree was in clinical research design, and having read the posts above, I’m thinking that iNat contributers would make an excellent cohort for a clinical study on obsessive behaviour lol. What makes some people observers, and others identifiers? Or both? How many hours on average do people spend on iNat per day? What factors influence that (other than the obvious - have a day job, etc.). How has iNat influenced people’s behaviour - maybe both naturalist and other life activities (a few people mentioned this above), and so much more. Obviously rigorous science would not be feasible, but highly interesting from a social science/observational study point of view. Kinda like this poll and commentary :-)
But I digress lol. Without question, discovering iNat has been the most significant (positive) event in my life in easily the past year, probably more. So thanks a ton to the iNat staff who keep it going and to the community who makes it happen. You rock!
[Edit: grammar & last sentence in para 1]
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I like the way your brain works! I have thought and privately said the same. I’d probably be a good candidate for the study ;-)
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Found it when effectively bed / couch ridden for 13 weeks having broken (shattered might be a better word) my leg in 3 places, and decided to try and figure out what some of the photos I had of taxa that I was not familiar with were.
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