How much of the time do you use iNaturalist to find other people’s observations, and why do you do it? Two examples of my own: (a) searching for recent observations of an uncommon butterfly and realising there was a regular hilltopping spot where I could go to see them, and (b) looking for mistletoes so I could visit them to assess distinguishing features, record phenology, and, if not in a protected location, collect fruit.
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Is that blooming yet? Where (exactly) has it been seen? What can we hope to see on this week’s hike? When was this post-fire flower last seen here? Any ‘typical’ spiders in Cape Town?
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My most recent similar use:
Here in NW New South Wales, Australia, I record locations of two weed Opuntia species. I was recently headed to east coast USA and thought it would be cool to see an Opuntia in its natural environment. So I went to iNat and found a cool one NE of Toronto, we were already planning to visit Niagara Falls. I contacted a chap and he was wonderful. He offered to meet us near the site and show us. We had a great morning with him. And he suggested another site to see a different Opuntia - we had a great day t that reserve. these two experiences really added to my holiday.
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I often use iNaturalist to see what kind of molluscs can be found in a certain country when I am planning to go on a holiday there. The ‘rare’ species can be hard to find (usually because of the small size), so a location might help to find certain species. I use other sites too, such as Observation.org, but in my opinion that site is less complete and more useful for my home country the Netherlands and the rest of Europe.
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A. My son is named after a bird that occurs near us, but isn’t so easy to find. He wanted to see this bird. I searched for it on iNaturalist and found out there was a park a short drive from our house where this bird was frequently observed. We drove there, he saw it immediately, we photographed it, mission accomplished.
B. I used to work in a state park and started a large iNat project for that park. We would regularly have researchers show up to this park, state park permits in hand, to study organisms they knew were there because of iNat observations.
C. I live in California Wine Country (Sonoma County) and watch with detached horror as Spotted Lanternflies, an invasive insect that threaten many crops including grapes, spread closer to here. I am less concerned about the effect on the wine industry, and more concerned about the pesticides that industry will spray when these invaders are decimating their extremely expensive vines.
D. Many people who know me send me a vague description of an organism they encountered, and I enjoy trying to think what they might have actually seen. If it was an owl in Vancouver, I look up what owls were observed in Vancouver on that same day, maybe even in that same park. I can forward them the link to the observation and fairly often they say that is exactly what they saw.
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D. Oh yes! I think my most recent one of these was a friend saying she and her brother had seen a small kind-of-otter-shaped animal (definitely not a cat!) running around in a parking lot across from their city’s very big park. I get on iNat and a minute later, I’m going, “iNat says there’s at least one mink in that park, does that look like what you saw?”
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I use it all the time to look up other people’s observations. I live full time on the road so I’m always waking up in a new place. I zoom in on the places I plan to visit to see what cool things might be there and at what time of year. If there’s a particular plant I’m curious about, I look at the map to see if I can make a short detour to find them and if they will be blooming when I’m there. My current interest is Eriogonum so I’m often scanning iNat for new and interesting ones I want to find. Finally I use other people’s recent observations to help me identify what’ I’ve seen in the same location. What a tremendous resource!
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I use iNat to find nuts such as hazels and black walnuts.
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A relevant URL that may be of interest is this one:
Change my user name at the end to yours, and it will show only species you’ve not yet observed. I use it when I’m going to a new place to sort to things from that place during the month I’m visiting to see what to be on the lookout for. It’s super useful because sometimes a plain-looking plant I would have passed over as something I’ve already seen might actually be a similar species I’ve not yet seen, and the “unobserved” filter makes it pop up and brings it to my attention so I can watch for it. It also gives you a chance to pre-research how to tell the various species you’re unfamiliar with apart. When I visited a new country with unfamiliar birds earlier this year, I used the “unobserved” filter to make myself a study guide of what the most common birds in the specific parks I was visiting looked like, so I knew what features to pay attention to to get names on things.
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It’s great to hear that I’m not the only one using iNat observations to help find rare mistletoes, @afdexter! I’ve done that twice this year: once at Carrizozo volcanic field in New Mexico so I could see Phoradendron hawksworthii, and more recently to investigate a population of Arceuthobium abietinum wiensii in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness (Oregon) to confirm an exciting ID by surveying which conifer species were infected at the site. These are the kinds of vacation activities that become appealing after working through enough thousands of observations of obscure mistletoes! 
More generally, I’ve used iNaturalist records (and more often, herbarium records) to see a plant for the first time so that my eyes are primed to spot it more easily in the future. I also do this when traveling: a site that I know hosts one new, amazing thing often hosts many.
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Lovely to know how another mistletoe enthusiast does things, @holyegg! I’m on a bicycle trip now to follow up sightings of Lysiana maritima and see why it has often been confused with Lysiana subfalcata. I also recently started a traditional project to record local temperatures in parallel with the growth and reproductive phenology of mistletoes. This is helping me to distinguish some eucalypt-mimicking mistletoes that I find in southeast Queensland. It also allows me to identify observations with more confidence when the photos are unclear—as they often are for plants high in the canopy—because I have more of a sense of when plants should be in flower or putting out new shoots.
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i use it to help look for under observed or rare plants - most recently i was looking for a particular plant which had a few locations in GBIF without recent iNat observations. I looked for other herbarium specimens on GBIF from the same year and found 2 other by the same collector with the same date, location and habitat description. Two were plants that I already had on my search list for this year - the other was a rarely occurring plant that I had already observed twice in a protected area not far from the map location provided by the collector. Looking for observations of the third plant on iNat turned up several more potential search sites for the mystery two within a days travel. :)
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I have been to a local nature reserve look at a plant posted on iNaturalist whose identification I disagreed with. I found the plant no problem but it hasn’t been in flower the two times I have visited it so no resolution yet to the id. And a water beetle was posted from near where I live and I couldn’t tell between two species from the photo. I went to collect a specimen so I could put it under the microscope and so got a name for it.
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