add &identified=false to the end of your search URL if you don’t want bacteria or viruses
for example
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=unknown&identified=false
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Thank you!
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As a birder, I get you. If you go at a popular time of day it can be a race to ID birds before another birder gets to it. I see that as a good thing, though. It’s a real service to naturalists to get them fast and accurate IDs, and the bird system is really good on self-correcting. I think the goal should be to get more taxa up to bird level rather than not contributing to bird ID. Going at an off time of day helps. I often take a break when work gets stressful to ID during the day and there are lots of birds waiting. And if you can accurately ID gulls, the bird world still needs you. Dowitchers can be super hard to accurately ID to species by photos, but there are probably a few IDable ones languishing.
I’ve not felt confident in other taxa and I’ve completely given up on fungi and plants—posting or IDing. Lepidoptera people can be slow, but they’re working on it. A tip I’ve learned from other naturalists trying to ID birds is searching for species in taxa you CAN identify. Sometimes I’ll see someone IDing twenty-five American Robins (or other pretty solid to ID birds) in a row. I sometimes do that for butterflies and bugs I know well from the garden.
Please keep IDing birds. People also ask questions when they ask for ID sometimes, and you can serve to help that way as well.
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I enjoy IDing FL seashells but one day’s worth of posts usually only takes five minutes to go over, even when expanding to the entire eastern US coast. Narrowing it down to a single family or genus often brings up things to work on. For example, 95% of Neoterebra in FL are Eastern Augers, but there are 4 or 5 other species that occasionally show up. I went through the entirety of Neoterebra and found a few of the rare concava, protexta, and vinosa, one of which was actually mine oddly. I must note though, that I was only able to do this because Marlo’s website was so well done. https://olram9.wixsite.com/letstalkseashells
Outside of my usual search, I will occasionally ID plants. I looked at my state’s highest “needs ID” numbers for species I was familiar with and made a few hundred IDs. There are several easy plants that have a tremendous number of posts and that are extremely common where I live like poison ivy, wintercreeper, Virginia Creeper, American sycamore, and eastern redcedar. Although I did this only after looking to see what possible other species they could be confused with like poison oak or thicket creeper.
Sometimes IDing is extremely easy. For example, there are no other species of juniper in Tennessee other than the eastern red cedar (i find this most depressing as this species is completely unsuitable for bonsai mostly due to its floppy foliage). Every observation in TN that is not an ERC is either cultivated or an isolated exception. (That being said, I never ID on this basis.
Unless I can see the number of needles per whorl, I will not ID) I’ve found that this kind of ease of IDing is not possible with insects unless you are an expert as they have such tremendous variety and the most insignificant differences between species.
I hope this post is proper, I’ve never posted to the forum before.
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Welcome to the forum! And your post is great - I like hearing how other people do IDs.
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Every identifier is welcome! Every slice needs some love.
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I’m in the same boat. I get notifications for birds in my geographic region. Occasionally I’m helpful with these. I know my birds well, but all but the most difficult cases usually are already identified to research grade. What is needed often are sound recordings and I help with those quite a bit.
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I do also find that there are many other species in our area that can be identified by anyone familiar with our regions ecology and therefore are easy for me to help with. Some examples are that Western Meadowlarks don’t breed here, Fish Crows don’t overwinter here, and shortleaf pines are our only native pines.
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Thank you for acknowledging that using a well-done website is a valid as working from memory.
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Thanks for this reply! Can you explain how to find my state’s highest “needs ID” numbers?
Here’s the URL for my state, Massachusetts, showing all of the Needs ID observations sorted by species: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2&quality_grade=needs_id&view=species
Change the location to your state and filter for whatever group you feel comfortable with, and have fun! (Or feel free to work on Northern Red Oaks in Massachusetts.)
Thank you! Turns out in my state (Florida), it’s also an oak–Southern Live Oak needs the most ID help of any species.
Oaks are hard! And most people don’t know that you usually need more than just a photo of a leaf to ID them to species. (And we just won’t discuss hybrids, because we want to keep our sanity.)
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Useful link, and runs parallel with most observed species.
Which to my planty eyes shows LOTS of marine life for the Cape Peninsula.
But also lots of obs lurking there because - it could be that …
How do we find the number identifying a place?
You don’t actually need the number. You can just type in the name of the place in the spots where you would normally use to filter for a place. That will make a number pop up in the URL.
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And better to put the location in the popup filter to get the ‘right’ answer.
Top right box gives me Cape Town Marine
I need Cape Peninsula 2 (in the filter box option)
Thank you.
For North Carolina, the one with the most is Viola sororia. I’m not going to touch that one.
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That is smart of you.
If it wouldn’t make people sad and cranky, I’d do a lot more IDing only to genus and saying that’s as good as it can get given the evidence. (Dare I mention dandelions here?)
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