I look for unidentified observations, high-level IDs like “insect” or “plant”, and members of taxa I know how to identify: black bears (I’ve seen both live ones and footprints), white-tailed and black-tailed deer, guineafowl, the coquí (which I’ve heard, but not seen, in person), some Argiope species (which should be appearing soon), fan clubmoss (ditto), and others I don’t remember now. My filter is simple: anything that needs ID and was uploaded yesterday. The uploading date is checked in the observer’s time zone, but the obs appear to be sorted by uploading time in UTC. So I get coquíes in Hawaii, though there are more obs in Puerto Rico; mule deer rather than the local white-tailed; and a fair number of grizzlies. How can I set the filters to get more local obs?
You could search by area or collection of areas (find the number for each area by doing a search and combine them into one url with %2C between each; for example, ‘place_id=6825%2C12986’ in a url will search for observations in two states of Australia).
Alternatively, if you go to Explore, you can select the area you want to ID in using a box, then choose ‘Identify’ at the bottom right of the Filters box.
Either way, if you bookmark your searches, that should keep them available in future for easy access. Or keep open a trillion tabs like I do…
Am I going too basic or not basic enough?
Choose the location which suits you. I have many bookmarked URLs for Cape Peninsula (done that, what’s next?), Western Cape (also a neglected backlog), (rest of) Africa (humungous backlog to work thru). Start strictly local, then expand the area to fit your time and interest.
Alternatively - instead of ‘yesterday’ you can filter for Newbies - Account Created in the Past Week.
I usually do something like this:
&per_page=200
&order_by=random
&verifiable=true (default)
&taxon_id=51701,51703 (Panorpa and Cocinella as random examples; seperate more IDs with comma or %2C)
&place_id=13378 (Lower Saxony as example, add more places with ,)
Additionally, I often use the map to draw a rectangle or circle and then switch to the ID module and apply my extras (like per_page).
North-west Europe (my Panorpa ID zone)
&swlng=3.0891348499999793&swlat=50.10054532521162&nelng=21.18597819999998&nelat=68.09242613322118
In your case the URL should be a long list of place IDs and Taxon IDs.I can help you create the URL you need if you could provide all places and taxa you need, and places you need to exclude, if any.
Instead of going through the Identify page you can use the Explore map and define a specific area with the circle selection tool or the square selection tool. Then, open the Filters menu and use the Identify button in the lower right corner of the Filters menu.
Another suggestion: AFTER you click on that Identify button, let the page load with observations. Then, click on the Filter button. Select Sort By: Ascending. You will start with older observations that have been sitting for awhile.
In my examples I look for birds or unknown observations with sounds.
I looked at what places one of my obs is in and found that US Eastern States is place_id=51894. In the filter dialog on the identify page, in Lugar which is under Más filtros (along with the option for recently created accounts), what would I type?
But that wouldn’t get me Puerto Rico, where I’ve heard the frogs. Is there a place for Antilles?
To filter for ‘US Eastern States’ in the Identify tab, you can just type ‘US Eastern States.’ You shouldn’t need to go into the filters box at all. There should be two search boxes at the top of the Identify page, one for species and one for location.
You can also copy and paste this into the URL: &place_id=51894
There are places for Puerto Rico and for the Greater Antilles. You can type either into the search bar to find them. If you want to use the URL instead, here are the Place IDs:
Place ID for Puerto Rico: 6848
Place ID for the Greater Antilles: 141321
As much of the guidance you’re getting indicates, getting more granular and specialized combo searches in either the Explore or Identify interfaces requires manual editing of the search URL. Depending on how complicated your searches are, you may need to break them up into multiple different custom URLs that you bookmark.
There is an in-depth overview of how to manually edit search URLs at forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki-part-1-of-2/63
I have to use the filters box to get those uploaded yesterday. (I don’t want to identify those uploaded today, because the observers may have uploaded them with the app and haven’t identified them yet.) I had to edit the URL to get both places in. I got to only page 6, as someone observed lots of unidentified fungi in Michigan, and haven’t seen any obs in the Antilles yet.
Another tip; potentially, more so for Europe - ignore man-made borders. With projects, you can ‘combine’ areas into larger areas, then plug that into Identify - so, say, instead of IDing “United Kingdom”, you could ID the project Vice Counties of Britain and Ireland (UK+) - because then you’re also IDing the Isle of Man, Ireland and the Channel Islands - places with more or less identical floras, but much smaller userbases.
The Channel Islands is about 40% needs ID, Ireland at 38% - a more intensely IDed bit of England like Middlesex (or, what’s now much of London) is at 27% needs ID. It’s not like the Channel Islands or Ireland are totally different - it just doesn’t appear when people are IDing “United Kingdom”. So they get overlooked.
Ditto other places. If you’re IDing in, I don’t know, Belgium - is Luxembourg, the Netherlands and western Germany going to be that different?