Sometimes, I would like to keep track of something I see, even if I don’t get a photo that is good enough for anyone else to id. I would like to mark it Casual, so that others don’t waste their time with it, but I still want to include a photo and the correct time and place.
My specific example is of of a red fox that ran across my backyard the other day in all its vulpetudinous (okay, vulpine) glory, but the only evidence I got were the tracks in the snow afterwards, which were not identifiable in themselves. Is there a protocol for this?
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Tracks are pretty idable, and I wouldn’t call yours so hopeless, so maybe it doesn’t need to get to casual, but if you really want it you can ask someone to id it as mammal and then click on “as good as can be - yes” (you need 2 ids for it to work).
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Tracks can definitely be identified, I don’t see a reason to make them casual grade. Here’s a recent identifier profile about an iNat user who specializes in identifying tracks and sign (and there are plenty of other folks who do it as well).
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If you upload without a photo it will automatically become casual too.
Even if you have a poor photo, you can still upload it and add supporting information in a comment. I do this all the time for grasses which have to be examined under the microscope (when the photo is just the leaves).
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No need to make even terrible photos Casual unless identifiers have made it clear they can’t be IDed further. Tracks are perfectly good observations, though while some IDers do specialize in them, they often don’t get identified. Since you already know what it was that shouldn’t bother you. Just upload the pictures normally, and go to the observation afterward to annotate it as Evidence of Presence: Track. Don’t worry about wasting people’s time, since they can always just click “Reviewed” and move on if they don’t want to identify it.
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I believe that tracks can be identifiable in general, but sometimes the snow is too crusty! I’ll leave it be, though, if people don’t think it’s a problem
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Yes, now that you mention it, I did have that happen with a bad mink photo… I included notes about its location and behaviour, along with the picture with just the tail visible, and much to my surprise, it was confirmed.
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You can enter the photo as normal, but then after you’ve entered it go down to the bottom as vote no for the “evidence of organism” line. That will flag it as casual, but it will still show up in your records. As others have noted sometimes even bad photos can be ID’d, but if the photo is truly unidentifiable, or only shows the habitat the organism was occupying, then that’s the best course.
But there’s definitely evdience of an organism if the photo depicts a track. I think it’s best to just let the system work as intended. If the community thinks it can’t be identified past a certain taxonomic level, they can vote that way and eventually it will become casual. I don’t think it’s necessary to falsely mark an observation to make it casual.
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About the value and use of ‘bad’ photos
Name That Whale?
https://www.facebook.com/seafari.app.7/posts/901727893834556
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This is the type of thing I was looking for when I asked the question, and I’ll probably use it in the future for taking pictures of the location where an animal was seen. Thanks!
No, please, don’t use this this way, if there’s no animal seen just add a casual observation with no photo. If staff member says it’s not correct, likely it is, habitat photos shouldn’t be in observation, add them in comments.
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