Just a bit of a mediocre observation but I uploaded a sighting of one of the most common and easily recognised birds in the UK today and checked the distribution map to see where the bird had been seen. This is a bird that is not afraid of people, often actively seeking out human activity in search …

Such indicator species will vary from country to country without doubt and in countries that don’t suffer from the same level of nature depletion as us it might not be as obvious. The robin is the third most observed species in the UK and for the reasons I gave it’s likely to have a more even distri…

I wrote a blog post around the Bioblitz last year. The top ten, most observed, most visible, most seen - and yes I have used my own pictures of them. https://eefalsebay.blogspot.com/2021/11/great-southern-bioblitz-october-2021-cape-town.html That is humans reacting to bling it on. Not about a biol…

I’m completely fascinated by the patterns of inatters and the way it affects the distribution maps of various species. It’s also cool to compare it to some of the older biodiversity databases and see the differences. For instance, I’ve long noticed with Calflora that plants are much more likely to …

This happens for phenology too. I help run an anole project in schools and it runs during winter. We totally messed up the phenology graph for anoles for a while and it showed them being easiest to find during cold months (when it’s just school kids making several thousand observations). So it’s wor…

That’s the case with many species, genera or even families. Since most people live in cities, that’s also where most observations are being made, although most species should be much more abundant in rural and natural areas. For the group that I’m mostly dealing with, jumping spiders, you see a simi…

Being not acquired by scientific method doesn’t make data non-scientific, each (normal) observation is as scientific data point as herbarium page or collected animal.

I suppose it would have been more accurate to say, “…iNat data cannot be considered systematic in any way.”

Well I’ve set myself a challenge to fill in some of the gaps in the Robin map this winter. It started well enough but I just have to remember to check the map before I go anywhere and take the long lens just in case. I missed out on two because I couldn’t get close enough. I’ve only logged ten obs …

I may have underestimated how easy it is to log a Robin observation :grimacing: I’ve only managed 13 now and missed quite a few.

I just asked for this thread to be reopened to mark the imminent dethronement of the mallard by the mighty robin (in the UK). I’ve been watching it slowly catch up over the last month or so and the race is very close now. [Capture]

Mapping distributions of iNatters via common species

General

Topic		Replies	Views
Not an unbiased dataset General	36	4067	October 4, 2020
Biases in iNat data General	88	8545	July 15, 2021
Improving Data Quality General	33	1455	June 13, 2022
Abnormality bias General	21	3544	April 19, 2020
eBird vs iNat population maps General	24	951	August 7, 2025

Mapping distributions of iNatters via common species

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