I’m planning for an iNat Ambassador event in the spring, where I’ll be introducing iNat then taking people into the field. I’m using the excellent slides provided by iNat for the indoors introduction. But as I think about taking people out into the field to make observations, I realized that there’s no one summary of best practices for making observations that are likely to be identified. There’s good basic advice on the iNat help pages, but it’s very general. There are some good journal posts on how to make good observations for taxa ranging from sedges to mushrooms to earthworms, and there are some good threads on the Forum – but these are spread out, not in one easily accessible place. Furthermore, some of the advice on making good observations won’t apply to my area (e.g., there are no lizards here in SE Massachusetts US). I wanted to come up with something like this:
– easy to follow, probably checklist format
– printable in a size to fit in someone’s pocket, and/or put on the web
– would include the most observed organisms in SE Mass
– would cover some of the most mis-observed organisms in SE Mass
I drew heavily on various iNat journal posts and Forum threads, as well as field guides for my area. I would love feedback on the checklist I developed. I placed a copy on Google Drive, and would appreciate your feedback and input – you can comment on the Google Doc, and/or leave comments here. Here’s the link
Update, 21 October 2025: I had to share this checklist with local collaborators, so I created a cleaned-up version which you can view here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_6ajVUx0-gP9TtjPjP01obRUoV1WrUY4IMMwt8_Qeg4/edit?tab=t.0 — this cleaned-up version is even more simplified, and (hopefully) more beginner-friendly. However, I’m leaving the first draft on Google Docs indefinitely, because there’s so much good info from commenters there. Please keep leaving your comments here, and on the first Google Doc.
In my opinion I don’t think you should encourage underside of leaves for every species of flowering plant. I would be concerned that someone unable to identify Urtica or Apiaceae species may inadvertently touch the leaves thinking they need the underside of the leaves and then lead to harm(especially in Heracleum mantegazzianum and Pastinaca sativa).
Also, the special case for Solidago should probably apply more for Astereae in general, where photos of the involucral bracts are usually needed for identification. Rubus species are also notoriously difficult, requiring both primocanes and floricanes to identify in some groups. And don’t even get me started on the dandelions. Taraxacum and Hieracium are a total crapshoot right now.
For insects, many beetles and moths require dissection and photos of genitalia. Same for spiders, as many genera need dissection for species ID. Perhaps also add something about leafmines? They are very common and are species-specific.
Finally, underside photos of turtles and tortoises are very difficult to get. I would strongly warn against picking up any turtle(and could even get you in legal trouble depending on the species or location), and that’s not even mentioning getting your fingers bit off by a snapping turtle. Same for salamanders and frogs/toads, where poisonous ones(even deadly) do indeed exist.
New Inatters are expected to not know the exact species, so how would they know anything is dangerous versus safe?
New Inatters are expected to not know the exact species, so how would they know anything is dangerous versus safe?
That’s the thing…iNaturalist in itself doesn’t post field tips for safety when going out on adventures, and knowing whether or not something is safe to do in the field requires having an experienced field guide on hand, a lawyer on speed dial, and an understanding of what is okay and not okay to do in the field. There are also non-biological hazards people should be considering that everyone should know about when going out (avalanches, sudden high tides, flash flooding on mudflats, heat exhaustion, dust storms, etc. are all hazardous). Some people are also very dumb and chase animals that deserve to be left alone or use these as opportunities to forage unethically. If someone is leading a journey into some place for am ambassador event, bioblitz, etc. they need to have decent knowledge of all of this or bring a competent nature wizard with them.
I think that a list like this is more useful if it remains reasonably short, so I’m glad that within Arthropoda you focused on a few commonly observed orders; however, I think it would benefit from the inclusion at least of flies and beetles. (I started the latter anonymously before I ran into technical difficulties.) With flies especially, veins on wings can be important in IDing. For arthropods generally, hairs or bristles are worth getting in focus.
My impression, for what it’s worth, is that with phone cameras it’s generally better to zoom electronically by a factor of no more than 4 but then to crop radically; zooming by higher factors tends to resulting in pixellated images that lose too much of the texture.
I see “with something to give scale“ is mentioned at the end for mollusks but this applies to a lot of categories. Maybe there is a way to generalize this near the top?
Note to observers: Always try to click multiple angles for any species, try to include ruler or measure it and note or standard things like coin or something in pics (hand sizes arent standard unless you callibrate and add notes), flip objects or poke things gently for more angles, use tweezers and cheap handlens/loupe, never flip or mirror images in processing, place best photo as first and crop (inat app has both options), add notes if it is something unique. you dont need superior gadgets to be great observer, with 100$ phone and 1$ gear I get 85% Research Grade Observations with above tips. also check - https://cwf-fcf.org/en/resources/downloads/booklets-handouts/iNaturalist-Photo-Guide-Final.pdf
Mention what the habitat is, at least in general terms such as conifer forest, reed bed, hay meadow. This is especially important for identifying fungi.
If you are photographing invertebrates on plants, say what the plant is, or if you don’t know what the plant is, make another observation of the plant and link the two. Knowing what the plant is can help identify the invertebrate and it can also work the other way round.
Totally agreed. most of the ecological clues are the best information one can make and provide for any observations, example - for notoriously hard group such as amber snails.
Here in the forum, you’ve clearly identified your intended scope, so I would recommend making the focus on SE Massachusetts explicit in the list itself for the sake of those who might wish to adapt it to their own region.
I like the process remarks about seaweed identification, but these and a few others are different in kind from the lists of observational data that are desirable for various kinds of organisms. You might consider dividing the document into two steps:
how to take good photos or make good audio recordings
how to come up with a good initial ID for whatever you’ve uploaded
Your advice appears mostly addressed to observers who already know broadly what sort of critter or green thing they’re looking at. I’m not sure how applicable this is to your intended audience, but especially when I was new to iNat, a lot of my observations were of the kind “I’m puzzled by this interesting-looking thing. I wonder what it is. Can someone please help.” I often wasn’t too sure whether something was a bug or a beetle or fly or quite what, and as I’ve come to know, hover flies are easily confused with wasps. So perhaps add a remark to the introduction saying the checklist of tips there applies generally, even when you are unsure which, if any, of the more specific categories that follow might include your organism.
And when you “make another observation of the plant” please do that by taking separate plant photos, and not by duplicating your invertebrate photos. High plant taxa on iNat are full of observations where there’s only a few close-up flower petals visible under a lovely in-focus bee, making ID of the plant impossible.
If you include a coin in a picture, state the diameter in millimeters. Only people from your country (or the Eurozone if it’s a euro coin, or Ecuador/Panama/El Salvador if it’s a US quarter) will know how big your coin is.
Don’t use non-metric units. Most of the world doesn’t know them.
Mammals: front and rear photos, in other words, photo shows the head end and tail end - some species of North American deer, for example, can be most easily identified by the tail size and color. I think there are a few species of rodents/lagomorphs where knowing the approximate length of the tail (or whether they have a tail) is helpful as well.
such as the white-tail and black-tail/mule deer. As the names imply, their tails are colored differently, mule deer have bigger ears, and their antlers branch differently. In the mule deer, the first branching is followed by both branches branching; in the white-tail deer, the upper branch is a single tine, while the lower branch is a beam with more tines branching off it.
I generally agree. The reason I focused on Solidago (a) it’s easier to explain to beginners what a goldenrod is than to explain Asteraceae, and (b) in my county it seems like there are a ton of Solidago observations that go un-IDed.
I left out beetles altogether, for this reason. With the popularity of moth-ing, I couldn’t leave out moths. I thought about leaving out spiders, but there are just – so – many – spider observations, it seemed like anything to improve success was better than nothing.
Good point, I’ll take it out.
Thank you for all these great suggestions. Super helpful!
I’m actually the de facto safety officer for the small nonprofit I work for, I do the state licensing for our ecology day camp, and overall spend a huge amount of time thinking about safety issues on my job. I’m not qualified to give anyone legal advice on safety, but I can tell you the major safety issues I’m concerned about for iNat Ambassador events: (1) safety of legal minors (but kids will have to be accompanied by parents); (2) waterfront safety (but I’m not taking anyone out in boats); (3) injuries esp. from slips, trips, and falls. Compared to those, handing out a checklist is probably not going to expose me or the host organization to very much risk. Having said this, I’m going to be doing this under the auspices of an organization with good insurance coverage.
I’ve gone back and forth on flies and beetles. They were in my first draft. They may return in a later draft, esp. with the growing popularity of observing flower flies.