What do you include in the ''Notes'' sections in your observations?

General
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Hi all, I thought it would be interesting and useful to have a topic about what kind of information people include in the description section of iNat observations.

Also, I would love to hear what kind of information you would encourage including in the description section (for certain types of observations).

I clarify that, everything I’ve written here is just what I like to do, and it’s not to tell you what to do. I hope one or two things will be useful for you.

To give a bit of context about my iNat usage, I mostly use iNat’s browser version, and I usually upload in bulk of around 30-200 observations at once.
When uploading, I often select all and bulk edit for descriptions too.

Things I often include:

・Forest type, habitat, observation / collecting method etc
e.g. In a damp beech forest, Under a bark of pine, Under a rotten log, Under a piece of concrete, Observed from the XXX Island - XXX harbour ferry (often useful to note this for seabirds etc), Light trap, brackish water, etc

・State / condition of the individual
e.g. Flowering, larva, empty eggshell, nest, ‘‘The bird appeared quite tired probably because it got lost from its main roost. It flew away after a while’’, parasitic on XXX XXXX, predating on XXX XXXX, epiphytic on XXXX, self-seeded from a garden plant and is spreading, etc

・Abundance or the number of individuals seen
e.g. ‘‘Very common at this location, majority of the shells are this species’’
‘‘Only one individual found after ten hours of intense scanning by two people’’
‘‘Easy to hear the call but you need to be extremely lucky to see one’’

I think many people use annotation or observation field for some of these things which is also encouraged.
But personally, I like putting some of these information in the description (or both) because it makes filtering the observations easier when I want to find them.
Also simply noting stuff in the description is much less time consuming.
(correct me if I’m wrong)

・Links to associated eBird checklists or to associated youtube videos

・For anything from rockpools or underwater, it can be extremely helpful to indicate which seashore zone it was in, and what kind of species it was found with.
For example: Lower intertidal, subtidal, among kelp, splash zone, 3m deep at high tide, etc.

・Usernames of people who were in the iNat trip
example: Observed with @ aaaa and @ bbbb (I include a space when I don’t want to bomb my friend with hundreds of notifications)

I know some people do this and some don’t. I don’t think it is particularly important but I like the idea of being able to keep track of what was going on. Also sometimes, it can be useful to indicate that someone else also saw it (and possibly have another observation for the individual)

FYI, when iNat observations are exported to databases such as GBIF, the comments are not exported, but the descriptions are. (Please correct me if this is wrong).

Therefore, if there is important information about the observation, I think it probably is the best to include it in the description instead of just commenting it, or both.
I realize people often miss descriptions, so I often put in the same thing twice in the comments and the description.

Thanks!

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that my observation is of a wild organism, where the photos may otherwise seem a bit ambiguous to other users without knowing the context (eg self-seeded plant in a mulched garden bed); this helps to stave off ‘not wild’ votes

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Thanks for your reply. Yes I often do that too. That reminded me, I also make sure to write about it when I find things in unusual places (vagrant bird, a marine organism that was carried by a bird and got dropped inland, etc).

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I usually don’t write much. Some things I do write are why I consider it a wild organism. Links to other photos of the same individual. Descriptions of things that can’t easily be seen in the photo but are helpful for identification. Maybe habitat. Any odd thing I want to say.

I follow someone who details habitat and ecology of the plant photo’d. Very useful posts, though not what I want to do myself.

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Doesn’t seem relevant advice for you, but which organism a person is observing is much appreciated. There’s a thing where people tend to assume that different features are more related than they are, for instance, flowers and leaves (my organism focus is probably obvious) - more than once the flower is visible and the leaves belong to something else, and it’s hard to say if the person is aware of that and the target is the leaves or they’re not aware of it and it’s the flower. Or it’s a clump of tiny organisms… do you want the moss? there’s a lichen! I can also name three different genera of miniscule restiads in here, and don’t forget the carnivorous plant… And of course parasites. It’s understandable not to realise there’s a parasite, but since there is do you want the parasite itself or do you want the thing its on?

More relevant the broader the initial ID was.

Honestly one that I don’t include - for various reasons I do not pay that much attention to my nose in the wild - but plant smell is incredibly relevant a remarkable amount of the time (and sometimes just amusing, I’ve found some unexpected descriptions for smells). Texture, also, relevant. Something I need to take more note of personally, it’s a process. Glandular hairs vs normal hairs can be difficult to discern visually depending on focus, but it’s pretty easy to tell if a plant is sticky, rough, or soft when you poke it (assuming you’re willing to touch it, which given that many plants are unfriendly to touch is reasonable if not). The kind of soft can be relevant, which fascinates me. Is the flower fully open, opening, closing? Not necessarily relevant to the identification as such, but it took me a while to understand one genus’ flowering patterns properly (namely, do not go looking for its flowers in the evening…), and it can help with annotation (if the flower just closed, it is NOT a bud).

Unusual location is definitely appreciated… and location description. Scale is something I am bad at judging, but in the event someone is good at judging it it’s very useful data. Depending on how zoomed in the photo is, any scale can be helpful (is it the size of your fingertip or your hand or what?). Habit - it depends on how much photographic evidence is available, whether some of these are relevant? There’s one absolutely amazingly detailed photo I encountered recently, but it’s a bit too close-up, and the colour of the plant’s leaves (even just commented) would have been adequate for identification to species but it has been too long for the individual to recall.

Occasionally I will note identificatory features (as I’m aware of them - I’ll try to describe more if my photo was particularly bad) and sometimes variability of said features in a population, what I expect to confuse the species with and why, abundance when I can tell, location (eg. up waterfall/halfway up steep bank), behaviour, questions I have (why does that bird have its beak open? ah, thank you, it is true that birds can’t sweat and its a hot day good point), related observations, where the organism is (sometimes they are sneaky and cropping won’t help find it), and miscellaneous commentary. Not all at the same time. Which ones I do depends on context. Plants I’ve been spending too much effort on get appropriate commentary levels; a bird being silly I have but questions. Most of the time there’s nothing I know to say.

As a side note, I do appreciate people commenting stuff like ‘juvenile’. I prefer not to ID animals, but I do like to annotate things. It’s neater.

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For the identifiers I hope will ‘give me a moment of their time’
Beetle or daisy here ?
Wild / invasive / planted if relevant

For myself the info I used / learned to get to my ID
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/102667507
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/260361140

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I appreciate it any time someone includes information on unexpected species, for whatever reason. If you observe something that’s not usually found in that area, please note that. 90% of observations of something out of range are misidentifications, so have a comment that you separates your observation from the misidentifications saves times in separating your observation from a CV misidentification.

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I usually write the approximate size of the organism. Like “Approximate length: 50mm, wingspan: 65mm.”, but I only do this for stuff like insects and arachnids (writing it for things like birds and mammals would be weird).

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I mostly observe diving or snorkelling and generally do bulk uploads. I try to put in some habitat information, eg wall, boulders with kelp down to sand bottom, surge, and if diving then the depth range.

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Recently, I’ve been photographing dragonfly exuviae I collected ten to twenty years ago. When I upload them to iNat, I include the specimen number in the description.

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  • which organism the Observation is for if two are shown (ants carrying a bee, for example)
  • weather that might be relevant (just after a hurricane, 40+ Celsius)
  • size, either in mm or relative to a well known species like A. mellifera
  • if a plant has a smell, I will try to describe (sometimes I get a little poetic I fear)
  • how an insect flew or moved
  • if a particular aspect is shown in a later photo (leg spur – shown in 4th photo)
  • what plant an insect was on
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In identifying, I appreciate it when people describe some aspect not evident in the photos – smell, or the way an insect moves, or what they could see with a hand lens but isn’t in a photo, or how close they were to the water. I’m willing to use these when I’m making an ID.

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Nothing usually, unless there’s something exceptional.

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It depends. I write most on my microscopy-observations: Magnification, where I took the sample from (stream, pond, puddle, etc.), movement.

Otherwise I don’t write much, usually nothing. Sometimes a “sorry for the bad photo it was really fast”. Or an explanation for why the photos are seemingly taken at two different locations. Sometimes I include a rough estimate of the size, or something about the habitat if neither of these can be inferred from the photos and/or locations.

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When I’ve identified one of my own observations to species, I write a description of how I got to that identification. I note what resources I used (books, websites) and what field marks I noted to make my ID. This is mostly to help me understand when I look back that I went through the steps and didn’t just rely on the CV.

If I went through steps to ID one of my organizations but failed to figure it out, I write out my line of thinking and what roadblocks I’m hitting and then ask of others can help me out with ID.

As an identifier, I make notes when I’m going out on a limb with my ID to show others how I arrived at my conclusion and also to show that I’m not an expert. I also encourage others to disagree if I’m wrong.

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I can’t see a Description section. Is it called Notes if one is inputting using the website? In which case, yes, I agree it can be useful to explain how you got to that identification, especially what literature you used. You might have got to the right answer but using out of date nomenclature. I also try to remember to say whether the photos of insect specimens were taken wet or dry, as wet specimens can show quite different colour patterns.

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Anything from nothing at all to:

  • Host species of a parasite
  • Anything useful for ID, but not in a photo (e.g stem shapes, scents, sizes)
  • How I keyed it out, if it’s something really odd
  • What I think it is, but it’s such an uneducated guess I’m too unsure to put as the actual ID
  • Which one it is in pictures with multiple species
  • Confirmation it is wild for rare escapes / ambiguous photos
  • Anything interesting about the habitat (be it unusual for that plant, or just odd in general)
  • Anything interesting about the plant (exceptional size, unusual forms, ‘accidental epiphyte’, cultivars)
  • Literally just whatever I’m thinking about it when I upload it
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Location: Çankaya, Ankara, Türkiye
Elevation (m): 1091 mAMSL
Temperature (C): 7
Humidity (%): 54
Wind:7,6 km/h
Season: Winter
Environment: City park
Observation Method: Fujifilm X-H2 with Tamron 18-300mm,
Behavior:

Notes:
During the observation period, no harm was inflicted upon the observed organism. Observational measures were conducted with minimal disturbance to the surrounding habitat.

Some measurements may have a margin of error.

Media Usage Rights:
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Fungus living on wood, it is useful to write what tree specie it grew on. If you know the trees. If not, you can take pictures of the tree so identifiers can try to solve it. Or you can write conifer or deciduous tree if you know that much.
It makes identification faster and more certain, and sometimes gives good knowledge of the more rare trees some specie lives on.
It’s nice to search from iNat database observations with text “Picea” for example, if you are thinking can this specie grow on it.

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I always add the name of the mushroom that I find insects on because it’s such a simple thing, but also such an understudied thing. If people always put the name of the mushroom, or link the observation of it, we could generate so much more data on insects like Erotylidae, Scaphidiinae, and so on.

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