Disclaimer: I don’t know much about birds (except for a few kinds) but there are a lot of them where I live.
A couple of months ago, I photographed both sides of a feather on the ground just to see what iNaturalist identifiers could do with it. I was pleasantly surprised by peoples’ ability to identify a feather, so I kept going, and eventually discovered the Found Feathers project when I got a notification that someone had added one of my observations to it. I joined so I could add my own observations to it.
If I find several feathers close together so they probably came from the same bird, but I can’t identifiy the species, should I put the photos in one observation?
Not a feather identifier, but that seems fine. Might be best to message one of the Found Feathers curators/managers directly on iNat, though. I don’t think they’re active on the forum.
Consider contacting users karakaxa, brennafarrell, and featherenthusiast as these are prominent curators of the project. They may have differing opinions.
One opinion is that if feathers are apparently associated with eachother (e.g. at a kill site), these should be uploaded together. Another opinion is that separate observations can be created for each feather placement (e.g. primary, secondary, breast, down) so they can be given specific observation fields. However, there is also an observation field for “multiple types” so it is just fine to upload them all together. The feather specialists are quite good at detecting if a feather in the mix is from another species.
create an observation with all the feathers and just note that you’re not sure if the feathers are all from the same bird but they they were found together in the same general area. when a feather identifier comes along, they’ll tell you that the feathers are all from the same bird or not. worst case, you’ll move some of the photos to a separate observation.
Here I was thinking in terms of placing the feathers close enough to each other to be in one photo. Because if they are from the same individual, they would likely be located near enough to each other to be within the same circle of accuracy anyway. We don’t generally measure locations down to the foot.