As a kid, I kept a book of printed herp photos (likely from a digital camera, although I had a film camera at one point prior). Thankfully, I was meticulous about recording the date and location. To-date, my only iNat observations of Spotted Salamander and Eastern Milksnake are scanned photos from that notebook.
My first ever game camera was film. Unfortunately, all those photos are now lost. Talk about film expenses! I made sure every bit of grass that could blow in the wind and trigger the camera was cleared. Otherwise, you’d having nothing but veg once you got the photos developed.
I’m lucky if I even have my iPhone which I use but the photos are seldom good enough to use for posting so I run inside, if home, and grab my camera. Sometimes I’m lucky but most not. I’ve seldom gone out with my camera actually looking for things, just what shows up.
Every bee or fly that lands on a flower that I’m observing. Sometimes I can get just a safety shot, like this. I think it’s even worse with birds so most of the time I just observe plants.
Yes, but that’s a more advanced level of iNatting I’m not ready to commit to. For now, bees, flies, and birds are the 5% of observations I’d like to make, but which I often don’t due to equipment. I’m happy with the remaining 95% of observations and thankfully beetles are usually pretty slow too!
All the freaking time! I still don’t have a picture of any mustelid! I’ve seen river otters (CO, WY), badgers (TX, NM), mink (TX, 3-4 times). And some weasles I never could figure out exactly what they were in CO and the the TX panhandle. I didn’ tmanage to photograph a coyote until I’d seen an absolutely embarrassing number of them, and IIRC I’ve photographed 2 bobcats out of a couple dozen (including one walking my kids to school).
I’ve never photographed a barn owl either :(
I see probably 20-30 little brown skinks for ever one I manage to photograph.
