I am new and will like to know if I see a bird today and observe and identify it and see the same kind of bird the next day … do I observe it again or not??
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You can upload each specimen you see separately, same specimen is better to get uploaded not more than once a day, but same species you can upload as many as you want.
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You can make a new observation if it’s a different individual or a different day than your previous observations of that species.
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Welcome to the Forum! I’ve got tons of Black Capped Chickadees and White Breasted Nuthatches all taken on different days and different times of the year. So yeah, go nuts! You’ll probably get tired of doing it, but it’s a good way to become familiar with the site.
Edit: I don’t know where you live, but for me these are the only living things out and about in winter.
You can observe it if you’d like, sure. That can be useful information for unusual birds, where it might be interesting for someone to know that, for example, a hawk comes to the same telephone post frequently. For very common birds that can be more or less expected to be in an area constantly, it’s not as useful, but it might be interesting and/or fun to track over time.
If you know it’s the same individual bird (eg it’s got some distinctive marking or deformity), then you can add the “same specimen over time” field to your observations (you do that on the iNat website, fields aren’t generally accessible on the app). Just add the ID iNat from your first observation of that bird into “same specimen over time”, for each observation you make of it. Then, it’s interesting to track our often it shows up at a site.
(I tend to use that field more often to keep track of flowering and fruiting of individual plants, which have the advantage of not moving, unlike birds.)
If you’ve got banded birds, you can use the " Bands observed" field.
You can or not, whichever you want. Per iNat guidelines, each observation is for one individual organism, so theoretically if you see a flock of 100 birds you could post 100 observations of it. However, most users don’t do this and I don’t see it as being useful. One observation per species per location per day is a good general rule, but if you want to make more or less observations of the same species, go ahead. Decide how many you find reasonable and do that many. But to answer your question, it’s totally fine either way.
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Thank you, Inaturalist open my eyes … I see so many things around me that I just overlooked in a busy life. There is a few birds that visit our yard everyday and it helps to practice “also a new found habit” to take better photos. I am definitely going to do a bird a day.
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A bird a day is a good goal. For an added challenge, look for one bird and one non-bird per day. Perhaps an insect?
If you’re actively looking for something, you’re much more likely to find it. Our eyes take in far more information than our brains can process at once, so most of it gets filtered out. Your brain decides what is and isn’t worth consciously noticing, and filters out everything that isn’t important enough to pay attention to. For example, if you look at a tree, you might not notice the shape of the leaves. But if you start to study trees, you start to notice leaf shapes. If you start to pay attention to birds, your brain will stop filtering out birds, because birds are now important.
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