Posted an obs of a migrant bird in New Zealand. Heard song only, no images. The bird, Shining cuckoo, has a very distinctive song. I understand the obs can’t make research grade without photos or audio, but I received a missing media message (see pic attached) which concerns me that the observation will not be included in any data relating to sightings/hearings of this migrant bird if someone is researching the species. Is that correct?
If you don’t have media, then the observation will be Casual grade. It will not be exported to GBIF, but researchers getting data directly from iNat can choose to use Casual observations.
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Cheers. Yes, I understand it will remain as Casual grade, was just concerned the obs would not be included in data. For example, on the taxon page for the species, the observation doesn’t show up on the Seasonality graph, which is a shame because it’s quite important to know when these migrant birds are showing up in NZ. And many people only hear the bird, they can be tricky to photograph. The graph currently says 4 obs for September when in fact there could be more but they’re not Research grade. I always include the observation field: Animal Sign and Song, not sure if that makes any difference.
Do you know you can upload recordings of birds, etc.?
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Yes, but this is a difficult bird to record audio from. It’s usually far off in the bush or at the top of a tall tree.
Alright! But even bad audio is sometimes better than nothing, plus it stays in needs id pool, so it’d be easier to find for someone who’s looking for species.
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The audio would be so bad all you’d hear is wind :-) It’s a small bird and needs to be quite close to be able to record something.
I do try where possible to get audio for obs:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/audio-observations-from-around-the-world/contributors/jacqui-nz
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You’d be surprised at what audio observations people can ID despite massive amounts of wind or other noise.
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