Hi, do any of you upload no photo observations? I personally don’t because I don’t figure it is useful data if there is no photos. What is y’all’s thoughts 
?
The only reason that I could see people doing that is just to document a certain species for themselves. I wouldn’t think that it could be useful to anyone else so I don’t do it. If I find something that I can’t get a photo of I will make lists in other places to not take up space on the website. If I submit something I want it to be able to be used by other people.
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I personally have never uploaded photoless observations to iNat. As @eligug08 suggested, lots of people do it for their own personal records.
Let’s say I see a Bonaparte’s Gull fly over quickly, but I don’t have time to snap a photo. I would just upload that ovservation to eBird, since eBird does not require photo-verified observations. Since I have eBird to keep all of my bird records, I personally don’t need to add a photoless observation of it to iNat…it would never get to Research Grade anyways, since there is no proof.
However, let’s say I observe a Black Bear in my city of London, Ontario - a species which is extremely rare here. Since I obviously can’t record it on eBird (LOL), I would definitely choose in this case to upload a photoless observation of it (with a location) to iNat. This way, it can be at least documented publicly with a detailed description.
I have not been in the position yet to document photoless observations of a rare species that I am unable to photograph, but I would defintiely not rule out that method going forward.
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Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for the feedback!
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I do it for personal records and state so in the notes for the observation. They’re usually species I don’t normally see so they show up in the species list of what I’ve seen that year.
Is there a way to search for one’s observations that don’t contain any media?
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Not that I am aware of, no. Under “Filters”, there are places to select whether you want photo- or sound-observations, but no place to select media-less observations.
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If you select the button “Has Photos”, you’ll notice that it appends the web address after inaturalist.org/observations? with photos& preceding whatever pre-existing search filters were set. You can manually edit the web address to photos=false& to invert the filter. (The & is necessary to split each search filter in the address, don’t need multiple in a row, just don’t accidentally remove it). This applies to any positive search filters that don’t have a negative option in the UI.
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Really! Wow. Good to know.
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I had a strong suspicion that a handcrafted url could be constructed. I have a document full of various search urls for iNat and I mostly know how to amend them once given the bones.
Edit to add: I didn’t get it to work. If I add false to photos, I get up all the obs with only audio. If I add a audio=false& to the url, I get no results and I’m fairly confident I have at least 2. I might have to try to track them down later to reassure myself that my memory is correct! :-)
Make sure the “verifiable” filter is unchecked: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?photos=false&sounds=false&user_id=mmmiller&verifiable=any
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I don’t think that observations with no photos are very useful at all (unless it’s a sound recording).
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Is there a way that you know of to change how many observations are displayed per page while in the “Identify” tab? I’ve looked a bit, but have found no good answer.
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I don’t, because it an observation can’t be research grade with no photo, and a non-RG observation isn’t too useful.
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Some people may put up photoless observations to document species they don’t have photos of, particularly species seen before joining iNaturalist. This would make it possible to have a complete list of all the species you have observed, even if the photoless ones remain stuck at casual. I thought about doing this myself at some point but decided against it. Couldn’t be bothered.
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Yes, add this to the url for example to get 100 observations:
…identify?per_page=100
There is a maximum, but I don’t know what it is and can’t immediately find the info.
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I’ve submitted just a few no-photo/ no-audio records, all birds, for rarities I encountered years ago before iNat existed. Oh, also a wolf sighting. These are obviously Casual and just for my own reference.
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I very much agree.
Thanks @everyone for sharing your thoughts.
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It still shows observations, but it doesn’t seem to change the number of them. It will show different observations, but only the ones that need an ID. When I mark the box to display Research Grade observations instead, my edit automatically reverts to the original.