Operation Dethrone Mallard 2022

@blazeclaw You’ll be happy to know I’m doing my part - so far this year I have only recorded 2 mallards, whereas during the first 11 days of last year I had 13 :P

My personal top species for the year so far is California Slender Salamander, with 10 observations.

Looks like that record was created with just 13 observers as well! Just goes to show, a significantly dedicated cabal of naturalists can probably make anything the top species if they set their minds (and cameras) to it.

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Numbers make it a very different game today, though.

In 2013 there were about 300.000 observations on iNat and the cumulative total by the end of the year was around 455.000

In 2021 alone there were more than 32.000.000.

While it’s fairly straightforward to corral 13 naturalists to make a concerted effort to document a rare local species, you would be hard pressed to find the 1000 or so dedicated observers you would need to push a species to the top spot in similar fashion today.

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Oh thats good to know. I had been wondering because theres a decent amount of variation even in a relatively small geographic area, but was having trouble finding concrete information about it.

It was a very redundant observation, I like to cull out redundant observations on my own list anyways :)

This made me chuckle :)

… guys

guys

i think i got an idea

Our answer is Canadian geese.

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I probably saw 200-300 Canada Geese in one spot the other day. But I refuse to photo them (most of the time). They’re more ubiquitous than mallards in my corner of the world.

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I can only hep w/ P. domesticus, theres even one outside now. Hard to NOT see one.

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I would reccomend you do post that observation, since angel-wing is important to document!

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Okay, I’ll do that, thank you.

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There are 10 Hemidactylus sp. in my house, and gazillions of Pepper elder here, anybody up for a surge of iding?

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Mea culpa! Mea culpa! I have posted two or three Mallard observations already this year. I tried to resist. Really. But they’re so obvious and cooperative and there!

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This year so far I posted a mallard, a Mexican duck, and mallard X Mexican duck hybrid. So that’s only 1.5 mallards but would’ve counted as 3 full mallards a few years ago. I’m reducing my personal mallard input through taxonomic revision.

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As a counterweight - I wouldn’t recognise a mallard if it bit me. Some sort of duck?

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The most observed species, the duck with the widest native range and introduced almost everywhere, ancestor of domestic ducks, etc.

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Here’s a family of them - Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) from Riverview, Winnipeg, MB, Canada on May 19, 2019 at 10:32 AM by Ian Toal. Seven ducklings. · iNaturalist Canada
The male head should be more green than blue (lighting).They have about three broods like this in our short summer.

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They are close enough to you to bite you, so watch out!

https://inaturalist.ca/observations/23603184

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They do bite!.)

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You could photograph a set of seven plants once a week, documenting their seasonal varition

I have observed 9 mallards in 2022, which is significantly less than the number of days I have been out with my camera, so I’m going to continue to claim I’m doing my part!

So far this year my most observed organism is the California Slender Salamander with 40 observations, followed by Lace Lichen with 23.

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