- Juvenile teenage Torresian crows have hazel-brown eyes.
- The Geoscore filter is really good for finding oddball observations in your area.
- Laughing gulls are an American bird yet we definitely had one visit Northern Australia last year.
- Rhyothemis variegata has tiger striped wings.
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Thanks for doing this!
I learned way too much about Erechtites and their distributions. Apparently, there are eight species, but I had only heard of 2 before starting this daunting task. Thereās a hairy species called Erechtites albiflorus with pink flowers, and five other very rare species that have almost no observations.
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What is the geo score?
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basically just like CV there is geomodel of inat which learns ranges and so can be used for filtering odd ones while one should be careful of considering introduced unlearned ones - https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/99727-using-the-geomodel-to-highlight-unusual-observations
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Love that. I learned that trying to look through unknowns is super tedious (for me). I did it for a couple hours and then went back to Oregon coast plants needing ID for some relief.
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Iāve started going through orchid observations in Hong Kong, picking a species and working through it, annotating for flowering status (thatās my plan for the ID-a-thon, most of them lack annotations). I then went to the taxon page of a species Iād completed hoping to see a nice chart of flowering times, but the seasonality chart is blank and seems stuck on āloadingā. Not sure if this is a temporary bug. Iām sure Iāve seen these charts previously.
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Iām learning that people differ radically in what kind of ID task engages their attention, and nobody needs to apologize for that. You may be bored and frustrated by combing through unknowns but fascinated by distinguishing two similar species of moth, or trying to learn Mexican cacti. That engagement level is a product of the way your brain works (what you can notice, what distracts you) and of your current level of knowledge. If we had a quick way to help potential identifiers find their engagement sweet spot, weād keep a lot more identifiers.
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unsolicited advice, but what i like to do (unknown doesnāt hold my interest for long) is go into the filters on the Identify tab and set the low ārankā to order or family, then search for arthropods (or in your case, plants) - itāll bring up a lot of observations that are just a step up from unknown, while weeding out all the countless RG obs.
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We will get a new challenge each week - and I hope they will be geared to capturing and holding identifiers - who card wool in a different direction to me. Happy to bring āyouā the moths from Unknowns ā¦ but donāt ask me to pick over WHICH moth. It makes my contribution worthwhile to both of us. I enjoy learning from my notifications to take that ID further in future, or back up a taxon level instead.
Cross-training for identifiers ? Legs, abs, strength, endurance, and that extra routine for a sore shoulder or an aching back ? I have a legion of bookmarked URLs !
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Male fiery skimmer dragonflies have red abdomens with a dark spot on the basal hindering. Females are supposed to have orange-grey abdo but there donāt seem to be any females in my postcode.
My copy of The Complete Field Guide to Dragonflies of Australia from 2022 is already suffering from a taxon change. Rhyothemis phyllis is now Rhyothemis variegata. Can I assume that the two subspecies R.p.chloe and R.p.beatricis which the book says are the only two subspecies in Australia are now the same as R.v.chloe and R.v.beatricis. Am I right in thinking R.v.phyllis doesnāt exist in Australia? (Because I want to go all maverick and rename them to Chloe and Beatrice.)
I really wish people realised how important it is to get a good pic of gecko feet and claws. Native Aussie geckos lack claws on the innermost digit.
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Iāve learned that identifying unknowns in the Caribbean (Lesser Antilles) is similar to identifying unknowns locally. Mostly plants, some with more than one species in the photo. A smaller number of non plant observations. Not the most exciting, but it gets them moved a level or two.
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That photos of covid tests are acceptable as evidence of an organism! (Got told off for marking it as casualā¦)
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ā¦..wait seriously?
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Usually I only ID in AndalucĆa what I know. But yesterday my new book on āchinches pentatomorfas de la penĆnsula ibĆ©ricaā arrived with all 545 occurring species and keys to family and genus and I decided to ID some bugs that I have not seen so far. very exciting. Gonocerus juniperi has a black spot at the end of the scutellum, difference between Enoplops scapha and bosā¦
https://lynxnaturebooks.com/product/chinches-pentatomorfas/ - highly recommendable!
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Yes, I had a search on here and itās mentioned that there are quite a few IDās - just looked and there are 417 photos of those plastic tests. I didnāt think viruses were actually ālifeā but it appears from a very sketchy look online that this debate is still going on!
Whatās the URL?
Why would you share that data publicly though?
By this logic you could upload human feces and identify gut bacteria.
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A compromise when the world was shut down for COVID. If I think hard, I can remember us being allowed out to walk for an hour a day. Which seems crazy when I write that out now. Difficult to observe nature if you are confined to your home, and it does not include garden space.
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a way to track infections?
Itās evidence of an organism. Up to you whether you think itās enough evidence. But considering there are about 400 total observations of it out of over 300 million observations on iNat, personally I donāt think itās worth being a stickler about. No oneās using iNat to track COVID.
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