Hi Cliff,
Thanks for that clarification. Those location names you get from the search are coming directly from Google Maps. I’m not sure why “Karamea, New Zealand” and “Karamea, West Coast, New Zealand” are returned options by Google. The same thing happens on the Google Maps website.
Regardless, it’s certainly a good idea to then manually drag the pin on the map to where your observation was. When I look at your purple toadflax observation, it’s on the edge of the estuary with an accuracy circle of 1.6 km (I’m guessing you live a ways outside the town centre). More accurate locations are more useful.
I agree with you that it would make sense for observations at estuary mouths (and near shore marine observations) to be included in DOC ecological districts. That would be a question for DOC though as iNat is using their official shape files. If I remember I’ll raise that next time I’m talking with an appropriate data person in DOC.
More generally, though, note that there are other ways to add locations to photos (“geotag”). Neither of my cameras has a GPS in it, but my phone does, and I also have a GPS unit. My usual workflow is to have my GPS running throughout a trip (either my GPS unit or the Cyclemeter GPS app on my iPhone for shorter and less important trips). As long as the clock in my camera is set right, I can then automatically geotag all my photos with the GPS track when I get back to my computer. I can then upload all my photos to iNat with their exact locations (which the iNat uploader automatically grabs from the photo files).
Tony Iwane has made a nice tutorial on how this is done, at https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/geotagging-photos/66. He uses Adobe Lightroom for it, which is not free. I use Darktable, which is free. There are quite a few other apps out there that also geotag photos using GPS tracks.
I’m happy to give more details on that if you want to give it a go.