How to use iNaturalist's Search URLs - wiki - part 2 of 2

Another “how do I filter by” … question.

I’m trying to filter for an area within a certain radius of my library’s Reading Garden. The problem is that the library is in the center of downtown, which means that anyone adding a location to their observation by entering the city’s name falls into this exact area, but with an accuracy of 15km.

Using &acc_below=100 doesn’t seem to be including observations with no acc value entered, but using &acc=false doesn’t include those with a LOW accuracy. Is there a way to include observations with either no acc or a low acc?

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?acc=false&lat=42.984469402362784&lng=-81.2456022110922&place_id=any&radius=0.07504667775470478&subview=map

acc_below_or_unknown=100

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Is there a way to exclude annotating user id? I’ve tried &without_annotation_user_id= and &not_annotation_user_id= and neither is working.

Okay, but what is a “description”?

That’s another name for the text “notes” that you can add to the “top” of any observation. As opposed to the Comments that become part of the chronological activity feed on an observation.

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This is very helpful, but I have one question. Is there a way to search by month observed, regardless of date or year. For example, I would like to find observations in May or June (regardless of year).

Nevermind, I think I answered my own question by adding “&month=5” for May.

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Is there a way to search by conservation status? So say I want to find all that are “least concern”, or “vulnerable”, or whatever?

Is there any way to search for observations that are in 2 (or more) specific projects. I tried comma separating 2 different project names with the project_id= field, but it treated as OR rather than AND.

I guess I have the same question for the not_in_project= field.

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Is there a way to search for observations that I have not annotated?

not using a filter parameter. the only observation filter parameter related to folks who make annotations is annotation_user_id. you could use that to get all the observations you’ve annotated and then compare that against another result set. any observations in that second set which are not in the set annotated by you will be an observation you did not annotate (at least in the way that the filter parameter defines it).

I am trying to find observations of me of moths in Málaga in 2024 where I have added a description. But if I add &search_on=description to my URL https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d1=2024-01-01&d2=2024-12-31&place_id=30003&subview=table&taxon_id=47157&user_id=susanne-kasimir&view=species&without_taxon_id=47224
nothing happens. What am I missing? Other - or maybe related - question: Is the order in which I put those search parameters important?

As far as I know there isn’t a way to use one of these search URLs to show whether or not one has a description, just search specific text within a description.

But you can use a tool like this to browse for descriptions quickly: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNatAPIv1_observations?d1=2024-01-01&d2=2024-12-31&place_id=30003&taxon_id=47157&user_id=susanne-kasimir&without_taxon_id=47224

no

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Thank you, that makes it easier. I thought I read you cannot search for a specific word within the description, but if I could “individuals” would be fine. (I am trying to find where I noted that I have seen various individuals of moths, because I now found an observation field to fill out)

Just to clarify - the “search_on” parameter is only effective if there is also a text search “q” parameter specified. So, you CAN search for &q=individuals&search_on=description:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d1=2024-01-01&d2=2024-12-31&place_id=30003&subview=table&taxon_id=47157&user_id=susanne-kasimir&view=species&without_taxon_id=47224&q=individuals&search_on=description

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Is it possible to filter for when and identifier made IDs (e.g. all observations IDed by user xyz in Jan 2025)? The observations itself can be older

You can filter by ident_user_id and sort by date updated to see their most recent IDs

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you could filter for identifications using the API. ex. https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNatAPIv1_identifications?per_page=100&user_id=carnifex&d1=2025-01-01&d2=2025-01-31T23:59:59.999