I wish I knew enough to help out anywhere besides eastern North America, where I live (and even here, there is SO much I still need to learn). Here’s a question for those of you who make IDs far and wide: how did you learn to ID beyond your immediate vicinity? Do you just stick with higher-level IDs? Did you learn, say, how to ID the 5 most common spiders or conifers or mollusks or whatever in some far-off country? Do you have stacks of field guides from foreign countries?
Not that I’m running out of IDs that need to be made just with what I already know, mind you!
I think you can start with group you already know, maybe by doing some higher-level ids and checking what further ids those observation get, most common species are observed on iNat and also most observations will be of those easier species, but definitely some plants and animals can’t be ided to species without searching for a key.
The countries are based in the 2021 year in review https://www.inaturalist.org/stats/2021 so, no it has not been updated to reflect where we are in 2022. I was planning on waiting until the report came out for 2022 to change the countries. Although, I probably finished my list on the 26th of December when I posted about the project in the Needs ID’ pile, and identifications topic - so the country list may be slightly off Maybe I’ll audit it.
@marina_gorbunova I know you know this but for low observation countries in Europe based on this project one could use this link and insert /identify into the URL between observations and ?
I don’t have relevant field guides, nor attempt to learn new species.
I use the iNat suggestions carefully.
Mostly I feel like the GPS in our car, turn left for Insecta, and 3rd right for Lepidoptera. There are many specialist identifiers across iNat, and they need people like me to do the rough sorting for them first. The plants are hard, unless they have something distinctive to offer that provokes an iNat suggestion. I will tag in help, but only when it looks worth their time and effort.
These flower buds - musical note - 88 obs so far, getting closer to being included in the iNat suggestions. The conversation is a learning curve for me! https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/110376074
Try my damnedest to get caught up? (Ha!) Finish painting the bedroom, bedroom closet, and hallway closet? (That might actually happen.) Finish digging the hole for the lily pond? (I definitely won’t finish in a week.)
Plan all the places I want to visit in the four days of the CNC? (I want to aim for 8 to 12 different habitats/sites.) Install the new router which I hope will speed uploading my own photos and downloading photos I want to ID? Study up on the groups I never quite get straight? (But there are so many of those!)
Make sure all the relevant batteries are charged? Lay in a stock of portable snacks?
Maybe I could hit 65,000 IDs by then? That would help with getting caught up before the flood of CNC observations. That’s only … about 200 IDs a day.
Maybe I’ll audit it.
