Life circumstances have severely limited my ability to get out and make observations lately. I’ve turned my energy towards making identifications as a way to vicariously get out into nature and explore. So I’m curious for all of you are who prolific identifiers, what’s your daily/weekly process?
For example, do you have links saved to identify observations by geographic area, species, family, etc.? What are they and how often do you check in and make IDs? How many IDs do you make per day? What drives you? Do you subscribe to geographic areas or species? I’d love specific examples.
Right now my daily practice is working on unknowns in my state that are from 2023. I have a link saved with my search terms that I visit every day to chip away at reducing unknowns that are languishing. Outside of birds, which don’t need much help, I’m a generalist naturalist. I like to put my efforts to things that are most impactful or need extra help. If there is a region of the world that really needs help from someone who can put unknowns into broad categories, I’d love to adopt it!
I’d like to add a few more search categories to my daily routine. I get inspired by hearing what other people do, so please share. I’m always curious when I see someone has six-digits of identifications and wonder how they did it.
Thanks in advance to anyone who responds and shares.
I try to get on and make ID’s a couple of times a day. Usually, I start by checking notifications for requests or corrections, then I do a page or two of Bombus for North America, and then some of the more common species individually, then check species that I am particularly interested in.
I started out by just adding coarse ID’s to unknowns worldwide but then I realized I could do a lot more good by focusing on my home state. I’m not really an expert in anything but I knew more than I expected about some local species. I look at most recent mammals, birds, and unknowns daily and also randomly dated unknowns to clean up some of the older ones.
In the summer months when there are more observations, just sticking to my home state keeps me plenty busy. Sometimes I also look at a neighboring state that has a similar ecosystem. In the winter months when it’s slower, I’ll open it up to worldwide unknowns again or focus on a random country (like somewhere I’ve traveled) just for something different. I also sometimes just look at the accounts that have been opened within the last week and help out by adding comments for new users.
What drives me? I’m really Type A so it’s satisfying to me to feel like I’m “cleaning up” something like the unknown pile. It’s also just a fun hobby for me to do on my breaks at work. I’ll do it for about 10 minutes a couple times a day.
Daily addict, so I start with the taxa (usually species, genera, or families) that I’ve identified completely or nearly completely. So, for example mainland Iguanidae in South and Central America, then on to Gonatodes, or Urosaurus. Next, I’ll check my projects to ID anything added to those recently and clear those. Finally, if that doesn’t fill my entire day, I usually have a taxon or two that I’m trying to ID everyone in, so I’ll search for those. In that case, I do these geographically and try to create gaps in high-density areas on the map. That way I slowly create a map of isolated clusters of observations that I’ll come back to when time permits, but I also see when something new pops up in the map (all of this is done in the Explore page for IDs, not the Identify page). I just around geographically but am constantly trying to divide and conquer every observation in a taxon.
Added in edit: oh I forgot, every so often I run up to some of the higher taxa like family or sub-family to try to rescue any observations stuck at that rank because of conflicting ID. For these I always try to keep ‘verifiable’ unchecked in the search so as to rescue casual observations. However, that checkbox constantly seems to get re-checked whenever I have to reload a search.
I’m a bit of an iNaturalist ID’ing addict, but I’m extremely narrow in my ID’s… I’m a regional ID’er! My region (Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, USA) is quite active on iNaturalist with around 2.4 million observations. I’ve ID’ed about half a million of those, whew. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=57484&view=identifiers
So, I have a few links that I check regularly – a link to identify for the DFW region, several links to projects for master naturalist (volunteer) groups, and then I’ll follow a few folks that explore outside of this region. I also frequently just randomly select a country/area (usually one that I hear about on international news), and rather than ID, I’ll scroll through the observations and daydream about visiting these areas! :)
So, my reasoning to ID my region isn’t really to ‘clean up the data,’ but instead I do this to learn the regional flora and fauna, and I also do this to engage with the local community! We’re lucky to have a whole slew of bioblitzes, and it’s always fun to gather with folks in real life – “Oh! You’re screenname!” :)
I open the app daily and I’ll type Bombus in the observation search box and select US and then narrow it to more NE. If they are all research grade then I move on to something else like certain easy to ID plants.
I also have a link to all the unknown observations and start getting those at least a ID whether it is life or plants or an actual genus.
This observation has been “Unknown” since August 1st. I IDed it as a flowering plant (which doesn’t seem like much of an improvement to me) but 11 hours later someone else IDed it to species (not yet confirmed). So, although it makes me feel stupid to say, “That’s a flowering plant,” especially since it has fruit on it, which should make that obvious, I guess it is helping to move things along.
for daily IDing, i have a bookmarked link that’s fairly broad (north america, birds, insects, etc) but then add additional filters pretty quickly. i go in chunks of 100 research ids so i will go through butterflies and then birds and then unknowns until the hundred mark. it’s partly a focus thing - go too long and errors creep in. i do try to be mindful, even with the big buckets, which species (and in which areas) i will identify and certainly which i will identify to research grade. like, i am a hiker with a camera and not a taxonomist, so i try to stick with things i have seen in areas i have been in which is more general.
then seasonally, i will shift to unknowns in arizona for the spring and summer rains and focus on the plants. or there are some really frequent misidentifications for some butterflies, so i will just filter specifically for that issue and go through the needs id set. also if i notice a certain misidentification happening, i will go through that genus. that’s really streaky though. if the weather is bad, i will select a month and go through unknowns for a bit and look for things i know specifically, things i know broadly, things i know there’s active identifiers for, or things i think can be identified from that particular photo.
I’m subscribed to these two place, one is my city, and the other is a park where people often see very interesting species. So then, I try to go and find them.
I haven’t been IDing as much lately (I got a new job with significantly less downtime and my current project is adding annotations to all observations or Trillium Grandiflorum), nor am I as prolific of an identifier as other people. That being said I tend to stick to taxa or places I find interesting. I am extremely comfortable with, and rather enjoy, iding Trillium Grandiflorum so that is always my first check and then I go through trillium in general to see if there are any I can ID. I will also go through places I frequent or like or find interesting and try to tackle any and all (if possible) Unknowns from those areas as I have found it is easier for my brain to do smaller areas where its easier to clear out all the unknowns. Then I go through just my local area/or areas I am interested in and see if there are any observations from there that I can identify. Really it just depends on what I find most fun in that moment.
Half my IDs are from within my state alone. Then I radiate outward until the biome becomes unfamiliar. I find time to make quick agreeing IDs to get them to RG level via mobile. But on the computer, I specialize in eastern North American cicadas and certain plant species, so I hit observations of them hard periodically.
How do these work, and could these be adapted for use with Chironomidae? Would the still work if I just change the taxa IDs, or are they more edited than that?
That’s awesome! That’s one of the reasons I like IDing older unknown observations. I’ve found some real gems hidden in there. Like pitcher plants and sound files of Chuck-will’s-Widows.
Yes - wonderful to be able clear that one! Take a deep breath and return to The Other One which dances around 300 pages, no matter how many I clear each time.
