Help with Observation Fields

[ronbinature]

Hello,

My wife is an active birder so I’ve taken up birding photography so that we have something to do together. Summer 2025 I did a study of the desert purple martins in Saguaro National Park East in Tucson, AZ, USA. I’m not a biologist or even much of a birder, but I really enjoyed studying and spending time with the desert purple martins last summer. I made 100+ observations and cross posted to the Desert Purple Martin group here on iNat.

A lot of my observations were focused on the behavior of the purple martins, but being new to iNat I didn’t add any observation fields. I don’t have a biology background, but I did put a lot of work into the 100+ observations I made. I’m glad to add observation fields going forward so that a researcher might find my observations useful one day and be able to search more easily for what they are studying.

Would someone review a few of my observations and be able to suggestion some observation fields? There are just so many options for the observation field I thought that if maybe a few people could make some suggestions based on a few of my posts from 2025 I could apply those lessons to the continuing work in summer of 2026.

Here are some of the observations that I contain interesting behavior:

Desert Purple Martin (Subspecies Progne subis hesperia) from Pima County, AZ, USA on August 31, 2025 at 07:12 AM by Ron Bondy. This sequence of an adult female purple martin visiting the chick in the nesting cavity is only 3… · iNaturalist

This one is interesting to me because it shows an adult bringing food to the desert purple martin chick in the saguaro nesting cavity. In this particular observation, you don’t actually see the food the adult is bringing. Is it ok in the observation to assume the adult has food? It looks like a feeding scenario based on the chick with the open mouth.

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Desert Purple Martin (Subspecies Progne subis hesperia) from Pima County, AZ, USA on September 02, 2025 at 06:40 AM by Ron Bondy. In this series, the adult female brings a dragonfly to one of the fledglings. Then the second fl… · iNaturalist

This photo series is interesting because you can see the dragonfly in the mouth of the fledgling desert purple martin. It’s actually the second fledgling flying in to steal the dragonfly I assume.
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Desert Purple Martin (Subspecies Progne subis hesperia) from Pima County, AZ, USA on September 02, 2025 at 06:31 AM by Ron Bondy. Interesting series where a gila woodpecker is close to the desert purple martin chicks and doesn’… · iNaturalist

In this observation, the gila woodpecker is on the same cactus skeleton as the desert purple martin and they were kind of yelling at each other. I posted this as a desert purple martin observation because that is the species I am studying; is there a way for me to also flag it as a gila woodpecker observation for someone studying the gila woodpecker?

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Desert Purple Martin (Subspecies Progne subis hesperia) from Pima County, AZ, USA on September 02, 2025 at 06:51 AM by Ron Bondy. Photo series showing an adult female desert purple martin feeding a dragonfly to a fledgling on a… · iNaturalist

I think this is my favorite sequence of the whole summer, I was able to capture an adult bringing a dragonfly to a fledgling desert purple martin, and I was able to capture photos of the fledgling eating the dragonfly. What observation fields would be recommended here?

Thanks,

Ron

[DianaStuder]

@ronbinature

is there a way for me to also flag it as a gila woodpecker observation for someone studying the gila woodpecker?

Duplicate your image for the woodpecker - and link the 2 obs via comments for The Other Bird is at …

Or use an observation set https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/using-the-field-similar-observation-set-for-linking-observations-of-lepidoptera-when-raising-on/1018/4

[miki421]

very cool photos!

[cthawley]

There are some predator/prey observation fields that you can certainly use. Some of these feed into recording schemes for biotic interactions/food webs.

[m_whitson]

I added the field “other organism” to your woodpecker/martin observation. If you click on the name of the field in the observation, you’ll get a popup window of search options. “Observations with this field” (or some similar wording) lets you see how many other observations also have this, which can be good because iNat has many fields that do the same thing, but some get used a lot and some not much. When adding a field to one of my observations, I like to pick a commonly used option because I feel like that one may get searched more by people looking for specific things.

You might also search for projects that focus on behaviors of interest to you (random example: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/predatory-behavior-in-birds ). Some of those require or suggest observation fields and so you could get examples of what people with similar observations are using.

[ronbinature]

Thanks! I put a lot of working this project, often walking in at 5:30am and walking out around 7:30am when the temperature was up to 87F, I like to be done when the temperature hits 90F.

[ronbinature]

Thanks! Great suggestion to look at projects that focus on bird behavior.

[wy_bio]

I created a site to explore iNat data. The annotations and observations fields are displayed for each observation, which might give the OP some ideas about which observations fields and annotations to add.

Here’s a query for: Observed Species = bird, Sort By = Favorites, high to low.
https://inat-explorer.dataexplorers.info/?taxon_id=3&order_by=votes&order=desc&view=observations_observations&subview=grid

Here’s a query for: project = Predatory Behavior in Birds, Sort By = Favorites, high to low.
https://inat-explorer.dataexplorers.info/?project_id=220390&order=desc&order_by=votes&view=observations_observations&subview=grid

You can show/hide the fields shown for observations by click on settings gear icon, and scroll to the bottom for “Fields Displayed”

[GothHobbit]

Welcome, @ronbinature!

For the dragonfly feeding photos, I’d recommend the project Who Eats Whom.

(Also, looking at the dragonflies, the ode in the first observation that you posted looks like a Darner, and the second is a Skimmer.)

[ronbinature]

Thanks, that is interesting. I will have a look at it. I am interested in bird behavior. When studying the desert purple martins last summer I saw a lot of interesting behavior, like two males visiting the same nesting cavity with chicks, which I thought was interesting (they seem very communal).

Ron

[jwidness]

If you want to see a list of observation fields that are used on similar observations, you can use @stockslager 's tool: https://stockslager.github.io/iNat/observation_fields/observation_fields.html

E.g. if I choose All observation field datatypes and use taxon_id=11867&place_id=1 as my query (purple martins in the US), these are some of the fields being used. (Mouseover “Observation Fields” in the upper left to see the list.)

Note that just because a field is being used doesn’t mean that it’s of particular value to researchers.