This has been added, you can use the param hour= to your search URL. For example, if I wanted to gaze in wonder and nostalgia at all the amazing stuff I saw at night during my recent trip to Ecuador, I can go to https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d1=2024-10-07&d2=2024-10-14&hour=19,20,21,22,23,0&place_id=7512&user_id=tiwane&verifiable=any, where hour=19,20,21,22,23,0 will show me observations with observed_on times in the 7pm - 12am hours (if converting to a 12 hour clock).
After we tested this, it does often reveal that observations have the wrong observed_on time associated with them, most often due to the observer’s camera not being set to the correct time. While not ideal, it’s not the worst thing that can happen so we added some clarifying text to the Data Quality Assessment pop-up info windo to only use day, month, and year, not time, for the Date is accurate part of the assessment:
the day, month, and/or year do not look accurate (e.g. snow appears in the photo but the date is during summer; do not take time of day into account)
So please don’t vote “No” for “Date is accurate” if the time of day looks off.
It’s actually turned up some of my observations that I need to fix…