Ok, thanks!
No kidding! The local birds I post as observations get confirming IDs from people in South America and Europe sometimes. Granted, I am not posting rare birds, just the common, obvious ones, but still!
Yes, I have mentioned that to a few people. If I am IDing it as Plant, Animal or Fungi, they could certainly ID it to that level. I Died one observation as plant and the poster responded to say that they wanted help IDing the scat beside the plant. Some photos are quite busy so I am guessing what their observation is.
I am a little proud of the fact that I started with a knowledge base that would best be described as “extremely slim, approaching absent” but over the last two years have arrived to where roughly 90% of the time I know exactly what I am observing within my garden and so upload it with that identification.
This was due entirely to the kindness, the generosity of spirit of those who shared their knowledge with me, helped by the fact that since my geographic area during the pandemic was restricted, I kept seeing species repeated over and over. (I have drawn so much joy in not just observing Nannotrigona perilampoides, for example, once, but everyday, in seeing how many different blossoms the species visits, how it grooms, how it gathers the residue caterpillars leave behind, all of it.)
While I wish I had the same surfeit of knowledge, I sadly do not, so am not a prolific identifier, but I continue to find experiencing and learning about my garden and its inhabitants restorative. (I do work that I believe benefits the world, or at least gentles it to those I serve.)
To me having numbers beside my name means nothing. I disliked the whole change from putting up observations to making it a race to have the most observations.
?
Most of us are iNatting as intended. The human slice of improving data quality.
Unknown obs have not much value. Until. Someone, identifies them.
It’s similar for me, and it feels quite crazy sometimes - me and my wife were walking through the forest the other day and looking at all the turning-brown late-autumn leaves next to the trail - and we realized that we know what plant species each single leaf belongs to. About 3 years ago neither of us would have know what any flower is even in full bloom - only in spring 2020 is when we first started learning about some of them since we suddenly had time to leave the apartment and go out into nature (thanks to covid of all things…). A year ago I probably could recognize most local wild flowers by their bloom, but not by leaf - and somehow now without ever consciously studying them I also recognize them from their leaves.
Somehow I can’t transfer that knowledge to inat observations quite yet - I look at a picture of a plant leaf and think “looks like Packera to me”, but I couldn’t really describe why and while it would be good enough to myself walking through the forest, I’m only like 90% sure… and there’s a 10% chance it’s not even in the same family, so I need to skip it for id. Not really sure how to improve from here on - maybe just wait another year and I’ll acquire even more recognition and will be able to id things from pictures!
We also feel challenged sometimes to id organisms we are very familiar with. Something about the lack of context. Maybe we should bring our computers into the woods and try to id there!
You can leave a comment - looks like Packera - rather than an ID.
Then if a trusted identifier ‘agrees with you’ you can stand by your initial That’s Packera!
When I was a newbie, it irritated me when people said - so difficult to ID things from photos.
Now, when I hike I heave a sigh of relief. Flower. Face and profile. Buds. Arrangement on plant. Leaves. From both sides. Wide view so I don’t have to wonder, is it teensy, or a twig on forest tree. Crushed leaves smell of citrus or anise or … Lives in community with … All those clues we pick up without thinking about them.
Funny enough I sometimes ID through the app in the dead time of fieldwork if I’ve already created my own observations (when somewhere with signal tho)
Yeah, has happened to me. I follow the advice someone here said, better to ID what’s in the middle of the pic as most people frame subject that way.
Some times people already know the family or such, and when you add an ID they say “I already knew that” sigh. But is more an exception than a rule
There’s a whole project for such observations called: Ignore the Elephant Seal.
One way a beginner can start identifying easily is just to have a field guide on hand. I know it can get intimidating when the Big Dogs on here say that field guides don’t cover all the lookalike species – but it’s a start, and even if it turns out that you were wrong about the field guide species, you’re still probably right about the genus.
So you have your wildflower guide in hand, and you confidently identify Taraxacum officinale. Then someone else comes along and says that there are at least 1,000,000,000 identical microspecies which can only told apart by karyotyping, a full phytochemical panel, and the color of the midrib of the first leaf of the season. They bump it back to Section Taraxacum. Well, you were still right about the genus, and that’s a lot better than “unknown,” “plants,” or even “dicots.”
You forgot whether that midrib is glabrous for more or less than 17 mm.
And then sometimes I take a picture of a woodpecker high up in a tree with my phone and it’s basically just a few blurry pixels and within 5 minutes 5 people identify it to sub-species… maybe I should switch from plants to birds.
No, we need more plant people!!! I mean, birds are nice and all, but they’re generally easy if you get a decent look. Too many people concentrate on just birds and never see the rest of the world.
Yes, a good suggestion, and I have many field guides for the Pacific Northwest. My mistake is limiting my ID area to the state of Oregon, only a portion of which is in the PNW. Oregon has many diverse habitats. But I’m still here. I haven’t given up.
I love “Ignore the cat!” Too funny!
I’ve seen quite a few who upload their backlog (i am guilty of this too, though i try to ID the best I can). Some, though, I wonder if their main way of interacting with iNat is their phone (maybe using a computer to upload in bulk), or they feel uncomfortable interacting with the ID. It’s hard to say, so I tend to not feel too annoyed when it’s still good data.
Now, if i can just get people who upload all their photos into one observation to separate them…
…without also separating photos of the same organism.