A couple times lately I’ve come home from a day of bird-watching and been a bit dejected that I didn’t see anything new. Then I’ll start going through my photos and notice species in the shots I didn’t see out in the field! I think now I’m just going to get in the habit of taking tons of group shots and pics of everything that moves because you never know?
My most recent example; A Greater White-fronted Goose (Anser albifrons) I spotted in the background of this Mute Swan I was taking pictures of. My first time “observing” one.
It was still posing for you!
Not background per se, even worse. This Scaup was with Tufted Ducks. I looked for it, even met a group of birders who asked about it swimming with tufties and I said no, not a sign of its presence with them, so I decided they came before we did and it just flew away, turned out I got photos of it even earlier than they did. Also first and still only one for me.
Originally, this photo was for the bee on the right. I didn’t see the spider until I was cropping the photo at home! (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/61916207 if anyone knows more than “crab spider”) Edit: solved!
There is a significant amount of plant blindness on iNaturalist. I see tons of good plant photos but the subject of the observation is a barely visible bird or insect somewhere on the plant. Humans are like cats, anything moving gets our attention, the rest is just background.
I’m always finding mesofauna on photos after I get home, without realising it was there in the first place. One of my favourites was this pseudoscorpion hitchhiker on the blackbottle I was photographing…
Here’s an example from one of my observations. See the tiny lime-green leaves below the yellow flowers? The yellow flowers belong to a rare plant that I was surveying (Erythranthe carsonensis) but the little leaves actually belong to a different rare plant (Loeflingia squarrosa var artemisiarum), which is actually in full bloom but has tiny green flowers that are hard to see without a hand lens. I didn’t realize they were there until my supervisor pointed them out. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/181510-Loeflingia-squarrosa-artemisiarum
Very nice thread, I enjoyed reading about all these ‘late discoveries’! And yes, they happen all the time, both with plants and animals (or other creatures).
I was once taking pictures of this pigeon, sitting high on a tree, with my tele-lens:
and then took just one general picture with my smartphone, more for a context. Only later at home I spotted this scene - I completely missed it when I was at the location!
Last summer I observed a half-dozen white admirals (Limenitis arthemis ssp. arthemis) congregating on the ground. Amongst the white admirals was a small moth that turned out to be a life first for me.
Just 25 minutes later, I observed an even larger group of white admirals (itself a surprise) but one of them had different markings (which at the time I thought might be sex differences). Turns out that individual was an intergrade between Limenitis arthemis ssp. arthemis and Limenitis arthemis ssp. astyanax, another life first for me.
I was photoing tufted ducks and feeling a bit disappointed because I hadn’t seen anything very interesting on my walk. Then I uploaded the pics and someone pointed out that there was a little grebe lurking in the photo too, a first ob for me. :-)
I posted this observation of a California Root Borer Beetle, and I later noticed what I thought was a tick, but another user identified as a pseudoscorpion stowaway under it’s electrum. Two cool observations in one!
