Operation Dethrone Mallard 2022

I nominate the Canada Goose. Almost as cute as mallards, and just as mean.

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Canada Goose is a great option! They’ve been introduced to Europe, and New Zealand, and are prominent across much of North America.

This is a hilarious thread and OP should be proud of it.

As a person who lives in a place with western honeybees but not many mallards (I’m pretty sure theyr’e around here but I have yet to observe them), I will try to post more observations of western honeybees when I see them.

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Just out of curiosity, how can I do a search to see the most observed species in Australia in a year?

It is alright - I worked it out:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d1=2021-01-01&d2=2021-12-31&place_id=6744&view=species
And the answer is Australian Magpie, 4,644 obs.

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I can help by posting every single eastern gray squirrel that shows up on my trailcam

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Spotted Spurge maybe? The thing seems to pop up in every crack regardless of climate.

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I could probably get a spotted spurge every day but @astra_the_dragon might die of identifying overload.

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House Sparrow and Rock Dove (= feral pigeon) seem like the best contenders. Dandelion might be if there were just one species, but there are all those microspecies. Maybe let it be a contender as the genus Taraxacum? What other common, conspicuous, world-wide weeds are there? Bellis perennis (Common Daisy)? Queen Anne’s Lace / Wild Carrot (Daucus carota)? Bull Thistle (Cirsium vulgare)? Annual Bluegrass, Poa annua, is abundant enough, but not nearly often enough photo’d.

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i was going to say its weird that you dont see mallards much, but then i realized the only mallards ive observed lately are the group of domestic types that live on the water by my house. most others stay at genus because its hard to tell what is mallard or mottled or mixed. on looking back, the majority of mallards i observe are domestic types because of that.

i need to stop observing that group by my house this year. that will be my resolution. that will significantly cut down my mallard observations because apparently they really arent very common here.

we should all look at what top observed species we have access to so we can try to observe more of them to dethrone mallard. for me, i should work harder on:
honey bee, monarch, asian lady beetle, great blue heron, house sparrow, great egret, gray squirrel, cardinal, pigeon, mourning dove, european starling
i do know a lot of these i am guilty of passing over because theyre common. but to dethrone mallard, ill commit to observing them more as well as refusing to observe the backyard mallards any more

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great idea. i tried doing that and got lost in the squirrels and had to stop. but ill try to do better going forward to do my part

The famous “DYC.”

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I post them always and often more than one a day (I like mapping and getting individuals separately), with 481 observation it’s my 5th species. I think data is more valuable than ignoring common species.

I think you meant whole Europe and most of Eurasia overall.

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I will do my part and avoid observing mallards. Should be fairly easy. In the nation in which I live, mallards didn’t make the top ten list for species. A phytoplankton species at position 34 beat out the first bird at position 38 in 2021. I am guessing that there are not a lot of countries where a phytoplankton comes in ahead of the first bird. :sweat_smile:

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House flies or Mosquitoes. Done. Except I won’t do it, I hate mozzies :p

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No mosquito species will get as many observations as mallard, and they’re hard to id, house flies are 50% or more misided on iNat.

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… you did ask … I have Hypochaeris blooming in my garden every day ;~))

Come South where the rest of us live and it is the honey bee (altho since we have no way of knowing if they are hived and farmed Not Wild for my eyes)

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/great-southern-bioblitz-2021-umbrella?tab=species
and that makes the Australian magpie the winner

For Cape Town it was Pelargonium cucullatum

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So far your operation is on track! Porcellio scaber is in the lead, 121 observations ahead of you know what.

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Porcellio scaber is only ahead because of @blastcat :joy:

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This is not a Spanish problem, so I probably can’t help much. Here mallards are only number 4 (!) after Quercus rotundifolia, House sparrow and then a butterfly Pararge aegeria.

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