Eta: Oh, for heaven’s sake - I remembered I hadn’t regenerated the stats since they came out on Dec. 1st. I just did that and I’m over 81,000 IDs for the year. Frankly, I need to get a life!
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So you’ve already hit your goal for 2025
What to do??
Go outside and make more observations? But it’s drizzling and cold here today. (And tomorrow, but the weekend might be ok.)
Monday, though - Monday, New Year’s Day I am celebrating by hiking in a new spot with two friends who are also iNatters. I think doing some serious iNaturalizing on New Year’s Day should be a new global tradition.
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A tradition that would fit well with the “First Day Hikes” sponsored by many state parks!
Incidentally, @lynnharper on my personal Year in Review page, you’re #2 on the list of people who have helped me the most, so thank you for all of your identifications!
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When Steve Herman (former ornithology instructor at Evergreen State College) was alive, he encouraged doing serious Grinnell journaling on New Year’s Day, to front load as many species as possible for the upcoming year.
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Oh, you’re welcome! It’s really been a privilege to help so many people with their observations.
Is that a bad thing? I thought that CNC counted all plants?
The CNC, like all of iNaturalist, is for posting wild animals and plants and other organisms. Of course, many people do post captive/cultivated animals and plants. We identifiers get very tired of dealing with observations that will be unlikely to be used by researchers.
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Hmm…I’ll find the link. I thought it was strange…
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Well, I’m glad the CNC rules are the same everywhere. I thought this variation was some quirk.
Local CNC organizers can choose to include Casual observations or not. I prefer to include Casual observations in the CNC I co-coordinate because it means hard-to-photograph organisms like birds, calling frogs, and basking turtles can be counted. The global organizers of the CNC certainly emphasize wild organisms, but they allow Casual observations, if the local organizers want to include them.
But even if a particular CNC excludes Casual observations - to keep the focus on wild organisms, for example - if the observer doesn’t remember to mark an observation as cultivated or doesn’t really know the difference between a wild plant and a cultivated one (these are often students and I suspect their teachers don’t teach them the difference and why it matters), then it’s up to us identifiers to figure out if something is wild or not. And that isn’t always easy, as I’m sure you know.
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why would these be casual?
They’d be casual if the observation was created without any media attached.
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What richyfourtytwo said. I can’t take identifiable photos of those species.
You’d be amazed at the crappy bird photos that some people can ID and apparently some people are good at distant basking turtles (see this obs). Audio of birds and frogs are verifiable.
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I am very pleased to say that the number of Unknowns left over from the 2023 City Nature Challenge is down to 655 pages (at 30 observations per page). On Dec. 11th, there were 1325 pages. I’ve chipped away at this mountain, but I know @jasonhernandez and @sedgequeen have made many, many IDs, and I’m sure others have as well. Thank you, all of you! And onward to zero pages left!
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Respect!
The residual pages get harder, and harder - that is why they are still. Waiting. In the queue.
Rhamnus cathartica in Northeastern US has about 900 needs ID, and a decent number of misidentified. Maybe some people could look at a dozen a day or something, to avoid fatigue and irritation (haha)
Patti
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Although I’m pretty sure that I marked as reviewed more than I identified.
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