Let's Talk Annotations

What about a gall, or a feeding mark? We may not be able to identify exactly what species produced it, but is a swollen gall, chewn leaf, or scratched trunk evidence?

from https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-is-evidence/470/60

Galls are available as annotation.

That was an August 2021 comment (not mine)
Gall is one of the newer annotations?

Someone has probably mentioned this and I will go through again and look at the other topics, but


I noticed under annotations / Life Stage that there are only Adult, egg, and Juvenile for birds. But many birds, even hatching year (HY) are past the juvenile stage and are actually Immature birds. Most of the time, Juvenile is only used for birds right out of the nest and certainly not for birds in their second year (SY) or after hatching year (AHY). For example, some gulls and hawks may take more than one year to become an adult.

Can we get “Immature” added as a life stage to the list of Annotations for birds?

I’m not comfortable using Juvenile for sub-adults (although I guess I could if there is no other choice), especially for HY birds that pretty much look like adults and are getting ready to migrate, but aren’t quite adults yet.

Thank you for your consideration.
Amy

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I moved your post to this existing topic. If you search within it, you can see some previous related discussion.

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I 100% agree and the addition of “immature” is included in the table posted by @jwidness for bird life stage with no issues currently listed.

If/when this change is made, I will have to revisit a lot of my annotations for Rallidae. I’ve been using “juvenile” for lack of better options.

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Thank you @jwidness and @swampster . I thought there might have already been this suggestion so I appreciate my thread being moved to the right spot.

And I really hope they add immature as I am reluctant to assign juvenile to some of my observations even if the birds are obviously hatching year and not quite adults yet.

Thank you.

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Yes. They have a similar (pretty much exactly) system already in use on eBird so I think a lot of birders are already familiar with it and would be pleased to be able to add that information.

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I also would like to see immature added. It is useful for birds.

It is also fairly well used. EBird uses: juvenile, immature, and adult for their annotations and there are decent explanations. So I really want the option of immature added, especially for birds like gulls and hawks (and all the others) that go through several molts before attaining adult appearance.

Although I would like it, I would love a field for hatching year (HY), after hatching year (AHY), second year (SY) and so on but that is asking too much I think. :slightly_smiling_face:

Anyway, I hope they can add immature to the list.

What groups that is used for? I never heard of a system with hatching years, it’s usually calendar years http://www.gull-research.org/hg/0start.html or life years.

Hi,
The HY, AHY, etc is used when banding birds so I got used to it when i was involved in that. I only mentioned it because I have actually been indicating hatching year HY in the notes area of some of my observations for passerines that are not in full adult plumage but are not juveniles either and which I would have used the immature annotation if there was one.

It’s useful to me at least and helps identify the age of the bird fairly clearly. In fact it’s a little easier and clearer than juvenile or immature since it simply means a bird that was hatched this year/season, ie for HY. So there is no quibbling about molts and if the bird is in the process of molting, etc.

HY would cover the Wood Thrush I saw recently that had mostly gone through its first molt but still had feathers erupting on the shoulder and there were downy feathers in the undertail coverts and it still had traces of a fleshy gape. Definitely HY.

Hope that makes sense.

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You can set up an observation field, I’m sure it will be useful for others who use it as well!

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Immature would be useful for dragonflies as well; I have an observation of a Variegated Meadowhawk that’s obviously not teneral, but hasn’t developed adult male coloring yet. The annotation only offers teneral or adult, teneral, nymph, and egg; teneral is the closest of the choices, but still not exactly accurate.

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Other possible annotations I feel could be useful:

  • Additional “evidence of presence” fields for a variety of animals. Most notably, “fur” (or something to that effect for mammals.
  • Perhaps some sort of indicator of group size or type – options like “solitary/mixed sex/female bachelor/male bachelor” or something to that effect

Sadly that won’t be added, because iNat observation is for one specimen only, if you wish to add that information there’re very useful observation fields!

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This is why I tend to leave photos of odes in tandem / wheel un-annotated as to sex. “Cannot be determined”? No, they’ve clearly figured it out. :grin:

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Rather than the annotation simply calling a plant “dead”, it would be better to offer “senescing or dead”. This covers dead, or dying material above ground for perennials, and dead annuals, as well as dead trees and shrubs. We need a way to search for images of dying or dead plant material, as that is often what we see, and what we want to identify, or want to teach people to identify.

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a los editores o administradores de esta plataforma.

pongo a su consideraciĂłn el incrementar , a definir a detalle las anotaciones especĂ­ficamente en el valor del atributo para etapa de vida, ya que para aves bien podrĂ­a aplicar las categorĂ­as de subadulto o entremudados segĂșn consideren ya que para algunos especialistas estas categorĂ­as no deberĂ­an de existir ejemplo de esto es la terminologĂ­a de Humphrey- Parkes pero creo importante considerarlo ya que esto ayudara a agudizar los sentidos, motivando a los observadores a participar con mĂĄs entusiasmo

Gracias !

to the editors or administrators of this platform.

I put to your consideration the increase, to define in detail the annotations specifically in the value of the attribute for life stage, since for birds it could well apply the categories of subadult or intermolted as they consider since for some specialists these categories should not exist example This is the terminology of Humphrey-Parkes but I think it is important to consider it since this will help sharpen the senses, motivating the observers to participate with more enthusiasm.

Thank you !

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While we’re at it, could we add phenology for conifers? I know that “flowering” and “fruiting” don’t apply, but “pollen cones” and “seed cones” are the corresponding stages, and likewise, “no evidence of cones.”

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you are right I could well recategorize so people could better locate and identify by their stage of life and recognize at a certain time of the year how they could better identify
sorry for my english my mother tongue is spanish