Age and experience teaches you things. I now know that I know less now than what I thought I knew back in my youth. That’s because I now know there is more to know than what I thought was knowable.
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the tongue twister tangled my brain as I tried to follow along. terrible.
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The main thing here is your perseverance to actually go back and correct all of those IDs. I can’t imagine that will be a quick process, so good luck on it!
Also, welcome back!
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That is the climb I remember, thanks!
Oh, yes. So many mistakes! And I still make them, though different ones. Sometimes I clearly was NOT thinking – recently I posted a fern and a familiar wildflower as Alder (a tree) because of the name of the place where I saw them, not misidentification per se. And I have had to be taught not to make certain mistakes that felt right because I didn’t actually know how to ID a plant I thought I could.
Going fast does increase one’s error rate. I identify quickly most of the time. Sometimes I’ll get six notifications of errors I made yesterday. I don’t like that, but take a deep breath, remind myself that they are a small percent of the identifications made, and hope to do better tomorrow.
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Speaking of errors . . . some time ago I dealt with a photo labeled Tricolored Blackbird. It was a continent away from where this very local species occur, so after thought (really) I ID’d it as Red-winged Blackbird, writing that I thought it more likely it was an aberrant Red-wing than a Tricolored at that location. The observer agreed and so it went Research Grade as Red-wing. Since then I have learned that similar birds have showed up at very strange places and been accepted as Tricolored in the birding community. I’m not sure they should be, but I do think I should withdraw my ID and explain why.
Problem: How do I find that observation, which is layered over by thousands and thousands of my other ID’s? Is there a way to make the computer search for it?
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yes, but only to a point. Using advanced searches and custom URL, or even the API, you can pull out some very specific lists of IDs / observations… but then you would still have to manually review what was returned. I trust that when an expert comes by to do corrections, I’ll get tagged (and not be on hiatus this time! I got tagged for many of my mavericks by those doing the hard work of cleaning up Life)
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Was it this one by any chance?
Thanks for looking, @fluffyinca ! This wasn’t the one, though. I think this one really is a Red-wing. The other showed a clearer photo of the bold white wing patch. Oddly, I ran across them on about the same date. (I have no idea when they were posted.)
You’ve given me an idea. I’m now using Identify to look through the Red-winged Blackbirds I have identified. Maybe it will show up.
Edit: Not the one I was talking about, but somebody should recheck this one: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26405002
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The URL I was using is https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=research&page=4&verifiable=true&ident_user_id=sedgequeen&taxon_id=9744. I’ve now gone through all of them, but the one I mentioned already is the only one that fits your criteria.
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This might not be the correct place to ask this, but Is there a way to see what observations you have a maverick ID on? I’m sure I have a few, but I’m not sure how to see which ones without looking through each observation
replace my name with yours
https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications?user_id=astra_the_dragon&category=maverick
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Thank you!
This loads very slowly but I find it useful:
https://www.inaturalist.org/comments?utf8=✓&q=YOURNAMEHERE&commit=Search
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Finally took the advice and went through my own mavericks… I think I get your feeling now. A lot of stupid mistakes I have no justification behind.
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Thanks; I didn’t know about this project. In case anyone else is curious (and assuming I found the right one): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pre-maverick
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When you have eaten all your Mavericks (too little too late, those are already CID and Research Grade)
Try your Pre-Mavericks (where you are the one holding back CID) . But you may be a Proud Maverick. You may be the one who IS right!
Again - replace my name with yours
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=casual%2Cneeds_id&lrank=subtribe&project_id=156949&user_id=dianastuder&place_id=any
Or you can filter by location. Or taxon.
(Sorry @sessilefielder we were typing together) Give me 2 more members and @jeanphilippeb and I will be 90 
89 … one more? 4 new members in June, from India, Trinidad, Australia and USA
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Proud maverick here! 
(On the last one that is research grade, I’m honestly not sure so that’s why I haven’t “fixed” my maverick yet. The spring beauties in the Smokies are lot more confusing than the ones we’ve got locally, where the differences are much more pronounced. I wonder if there may even be hybridization going on.)
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This is such a real feeling. I’ve been going through my older identifications from back when I first started and some of them make me cringe with how confidently wrong I was. But I like to think of it as a sign of how much I’ve improved more than anything.
(And also helped by the fact that I’ve been going through very old observations of a few species to “clean up” and seeing the mistakes that other established identifiers I really respect made when they were first starting!)
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