Which many dandelion aficionados do not even consider to be a valid taxon. Even if it is taken as a valid taxon, there are still many misidentified, as “Common Dandelion” is a lot of people’s default name for all dandelions, or at best, all dandelions that they don’t call “Red-seeded Dandelion.” I have seen some “Common Dandelions” that are clearly not in either Section Taraxacum or Section Erythrosperma.
It would be helpful to have some “triage” guidelines for categorizing lady beetles – before uploading an observation – into “Probably Asian Lady Beetle” and “Not Asian Lady Beetle.” Then one could choose to upload only those in the second category.
I know how to ID the Asian Lady Beetle now. Hard to see in the field when I’m taking photos though. I can see the difference once I get it up on my computer screen. I’m posting it on iNat no matter the ID.
I have seen 45 of the 50. The missing five would require travel outside of Ontario which isn’t gonna happen soon (except short day trips to Quebec). Many of the 45 I have seen are not reported to iNaturalist (all birds). For the top 50 of Ontario I am only missing Common Buckthorn and New England Aster.
I may have seen some of them, but the English common names do not really tell me much. I met some of those names before but am not really sure which specific species they are except for the Great Tit which I do hear now every day even through a closed window.
But if they are mostly North American species then I probably have not seen most of them.
There’s definitely a North American bias in that list. A top 50 based on the continent or country where one lives would probably be more interesting to someone wanting to pursue species they haven’t yet seen.
Yeah, there no doubt about the North American bias in the Top 50. Literally 49/50 occur regularly in the US, and the one that doesn’t (Gray Heron) still has some vagrant records.
Yeah, just missing Great Tit and Gray Heron, because I’ve never been to the eastern hemisphere and I haven’t “twitched” to see a vagrant gray heron here in the Americas. And apparently I’ve never uploaded a mule deer photo to iNat, but I’ve certainly seen plenty of them.
Here’s a fun URL to see the most commonly observed species you haven’t seen yet, and you can enter your region/country to specifically see what you’re missing close to home- just change my username in the URL to yours:
46/50. Probably not specifically planning anything. Three of them require an international flight and the other would require me getting to the West Coast somehow. It would be nice if it happens organically but I’m not going out of my way for them.
Depending on location of course, American Crow and Fish Crow (expanding range in recent years) are RG at genus with only a photo. Descriptions of calls works too for species level RG.
I think I have 39 of them. Seems to be a very North-America-centric list.
I guess I was not imagining it… there really ARE a lot of dandelions and house sparrows out there (at least in my corner of the world)!
All the more reason to get excited about the species that are not on the “greatest hits” list. I always enjoy reading the topic about people’s favorite “lifers” - lots of interesting stuff I could never hope to see!
I have seen only 23 of the top 50 in the entire world. (A lot of them seem to be North American species).
I have seen all the top 50 in my country (Germany), though.
I’d love to see many of the birds that I haven’t seen yet. Setophaga coronata, Cardinalis cardinalis, Haemorhous mexicanus, and Spinus tristis look especially cool! :D
