Wanting to isolate a bird feature

General
1

Where I live we have a certain subspecies (A) of honeyeater. Offshore there is another subspecies of the honeyeater (B). I have been wondering if A ever makes it to the mainland. The main difference between the two is that A has a yellow gape for part of the year in the males and always for the females whereas B always has a black gape.

I want to isolate the observations with black gaped birds at species level and from there see if subspecies B is on the mainland. And maybe even figure out a difference between A and B otherwise if they are both in the area as the last decent description of B is from 1912.

If I fave them they get mixed with all my other faves. Is this easy to isolate with a project or an annotation of some sort? Trying to work out the easiest way of being able to get the black gapes in one spot to potentially share with others.

If nothing else I have subspecies A separated out in the non-breeding season when they all have yellow gapes!

3 Likes
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Probably best to use an observation field, sex annotation, and/or a project. You could also try the vision language demo:

https://www.inaturalist.org/vision_language_demo

4 Likes
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I think observation field would be your best bet
Here is one that I made: https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/17459
You can sort observations like this
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:aerial%20rhizomorphs=with%20fruiting%20body
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:aerial%20rhizomorphs=without%20fruiting%20body

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Seconding observation fields, that also makes it easy for anyone else to help out if they see what you’re doing. I haven’t used the vision language demo much but in my limited experience it’s ok at coarse “obvious” stuff (e.g. “bird with fish”) but really bad at catching subtler things like the case you’re describing.

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I’ve done this by creating a project to which only I can add observations and the observations must included a new field I created with one of two choices. This means the field is specific to my project and if someone else does accidentally use it, I won’t see their observations in my project because only I can add observations to it. However, I have to comb through thousands of observations of the species to add suitable observations, but this method should limit the risk of interference.

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I’ve created a gape colour observation field so that should help. Going through photos has been an interesting exercise. You can definitely use gape colour as a predictor of when the Wet Season is kicking in. And I am wondering when in the year the original B birds were described as I have seen photos of that supposed subspecies with yellow gapes when they should only be black.

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