I am wondering if there is a way to sort your personal observations such that the rarest ones on iNaturalist (e.g. those with just 1 observation on iNaturalist) would show up first on the list.
Mostly just for idle curiosity - I’m curious to know which my observations are least observed on iNat - but maybe some of you smart people can think up some other applications as well.
@pisum has a URL that helps with this. Wish I saved it. Maybe it’s in the “One and only one” thread?
I think you mean this one? (just exchange my user name at the end of the url with your own :-))
https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNatAPIv1_observations_species_counts.html?order=asc&user_id=ajott
That’s very fun. I had to copy it into Excel to sort it by number of observations, but looks like my “best” wild observation is this grass.
Also now I know which of my captive plants to take more photos of if I want to help train the computer vision.
I also made a page which does the same but already sorts for you: https://elias.pschernig.com/wildflower/leastobserved.html?user=elias105 (replace user name)
Since I was curious about it myself it also queries the leaderboard position for each item now, so now I know for which species I’m the one with the most observations… 
How fun - my rarest one turns out to be a captive orchid - only three observations on iNat total.
Oh that’s cool!
I thought for sure my cave species would be least - and certainly many are single digits (and the other observer or two I know personally - sometimes same trips ha!), lowest observed being:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/49368416
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/59608496
But apparently my one of one (only one on iNat!) is a fungi: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/108383545 which hasn’t been confirmed by anyone else yet to research grade.
And really, most of my lowest observed are fireflies. I suspect that this is because most people don’t realise just how many species there are, and tend to make them one of a couple because that’s all iNat suggests. For example these two are one of two and one of three:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/88608019
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/113169024
I started keeping a list on my profile for whenever I notice uploading a state, country, or iNat first. Something fun to track and brag about.
I appreciate @elias105 ‘s link for the leaderboard rankings
This is great! I’ve been looking for something like it. I knew my Kingbird hybrid observation would probably be my rarest being it was the first on iNat, but I didn’t know how rare the jumping spider that landed on my car windshield was. Thanks for the link!
Thank you for asking, this
Yes this is awesome fun.
This is fun, thank you!
I was amazed to see that I have 29 observations where mine is the only one. But here I must give thanks to the identifiers - there could be more of these species, just not yet ID’d yet.
Fun to look back on these rare observations, I have forgotten about some of them!
Mine is a mildew on a Duke of Argyll’s teaplant. 54 globally - not bad for a plant spotted growing tangled in a chain fence!
thank you! exactly what I was looking for.
This is my rarest one - found in my backyard.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/48543137
Lovely, saved! :-)
I have several observations that are the only ones on iNat
Thanks @EliasConroy! It turns out I have a one of one that I had completely forgotten about. It is a small parasitic marine red algae - Gracilariophila oryzoides
And of course I had to go through at look at everyone else’s rares and one of ones. Amazing!
yikes. if you’re going to implement something like this, you may want to make sure you consider the guidance from: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/api+recommended+practices.
thanks, thats awesome!
i have a few unique observations :)
a tick
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=263532
a leaf miner
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/29681396
a different leaf miner
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=1071940
green algae
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=1129402
and woodlice
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=469860
bugs are so fun
I’m staying way below the limits - it’s why the leaderboard column gets filled in so slowly. But maybe should limit it even more? Hopefully if 1000s of people would start checking their observations all at once my poor server would crash long before inat servers would notice even a blip…
I only spent like 10 minutes on the leaderboard column and couldn’t see a way to do it with a bulk request - but maybe if I just display top observer or not (which is really the interesting part) I can do it in a bulk request… have to check once I’m home.