There are a few topics asking about the your favourite observations or the best photos you uploaded or about the most memorable wild-life encounter you had.
But sometimes, making IDs can be equally as rewarding.
Perhaps you identified a really rare species (an iNat first maybe?), or a species you always wanted to see, or maybe you worked your way through a long key and reached a plausible species level ID at the end of it? Or maybe there’s simply an ID you put a lot of effort into?
In any case… Which ID you have made (for others or for yourself) are you most proud of? Or, which is your favourite?
7 Likes
I haven’t made any really incredible IDs, but I like the few observations of Pacific trillium that were originally IDed as large white trillium, and which I corrected.
6 Likes
I’ll take two! 
Both are wasps. Bicyrtes insidiatrix; and Lymeon orbus. I photographed these years ago. The first in my garden in July 2022. The other at my bird study site, Nov 2021.
For each, I got some “strange” suggestions from the CV when I first checked; and with which I did not agree. I poked around but could not find anything I was comfortable with. I set them aside. And then, b/c I work full time and do other volunteer work, I forgot about them. Which worked.
Over this past autumn, I started looking at old photos. to clean up and get uploaded. I found these two and fairly recently I uploaded them and checked the suggestions. This time I got good (to me) suggestions for both. I know the CV algorithm was improved and of course, many more photos uploaded etc. So it was worth waiting.
Both went to Research Grade right away.
The Bicyrtes was notable in that it does not belong here. The current map shows that it is a sand wasp of our coastal area especially straight south (we have a lot of coast to my east). Also, one of my former Museum colleagues, who now works for our city Park system, had uploaded one in 2023! I keep meaning to email her about that. At the time, she and I had to only county uploads b/c again it “doesn’t belong” here.
I haven’t looked lately - there are probably more.
Please don’t ask about the times I made erroneous suggestions… 
7 Likes
I’ve never made a ground braking ID.
It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking for you to be proud/fond of it :)
5 Likes
Hey, I just thought of one. Lemme try to find it. Also, thanks. I realized that now, lol.
(post deleted by author)
Much to my surprise I have run (figuratively speaking) across a few endangered species, including one automatically placed far out to sea. It feels like an honor to find something truly rare and yet surviving. Along the way I learned more about them and can check on them occasionally.
2 Likes
Bactris ana-juliae. Likely critically endangered but no CITES evaluation has been done. Found it in the cloud forest on my farm where it is endemic to the mountain ridge I live on. Used the Aracaceae section of the Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica for the ID. I know of no one else who has ever seen one outside an herbarium.
11 Likes
The one of which I am most proud, even though I didn’t identify it to a very specific level: @DianaStuder launched a mission to encourage everyone to identify in Africa and she posted links to encourage everyone. I felt awful that I could not be very useful but I kept peeking in at Unknowns.
Finally I found a day old Observation that I could put a bit of a name to, what I knew as a “Sand Dollar” though the ones I have seen look different, so instead of identifying at Family I entered it at Superfamily. Before entering it though I worked a bit to find out who was the right person to tag (at least at that time) and did so, and this person was immediately responsive. Hooray! It ended up being like the eleventh Observation of that species for iNaturalist.
In my small way I helped move a day old Unknown in Africa to species. (Such a tiny thing.)
8 Likes
Madagascan silk angels (I said - it’s a moth? And so they are. With more undescribed sp coming in!) Orchid? Fern? Insect? Seed? ??
And so satisfying Lucy, when your taxon specialist comments
Gorgeous !
7 Likes
Coincidentally, just minutes after reading this Forum article, I made my coolest ID, so now I’m right back to report it.
The observation was labeled Unknown and it looked like a dead leaf, and it was in Mzuzu City, Malawi, Africa. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/253476795
I snipped the image so that the insect took up more of the picture. This gave iNaturalist AI enough to chew on and it spit out Ghost Mantis. There were over 55 Ghost Mantises within a1000 kilometer radius and there are only three species worldwide. It was a clear match to the Common Ghost Mantis as were 53 of the observations.
7 Likes
I love the silk angels (and such a great name too)! Especially this “scaly” one. I’m hoping that there’s gonna be some research done on them so I can read more about them. :D
Wow. That’s cool. An amazing observation and identification at the same time! :D
2 Likes
I made the ID I’m proudest of yesterday:
A really beautiful parasitic copepod on a really beautiful starfish on the coast of Japan that had been left at “Copepoda” for 6 years.
I thought the best approach was to ID the starfish (Fromia monilis) first and then with luck find a paper or annotation somewhere that mentions its parasites. Sadly there wasn’t, but I found a single image on the internet (on amazon of all places) of the same species of copepod on the same species of starfish, IDed as “Stellicola sp.”
I couldn’t find any species of that genus associated with F. monilis, but I did find anatomy drawings that matched and it seems that the entire family Stellicola belongs to has echinoderms as hosts, so I identified it at family level and it is the first observation of that currently on iNat.
I do hope I haven’t mis-IDed, but after all that research I am fairly confident.
5 Likes
Wow! That is undeniably the longest chain of IDs I have ever seen on one observation, and possibly the most entertaining.
One of my favorite things about IDing is coming across interesting “conversations” like this one.
I bet there is a way to find out which iNat observation actually has the most IDs and comments … but I’m not going to try to figure it out.
1 Like
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5890862
Have you met Gerald? (Warning: open at your own risk.)
1 Like
I’ve heard of Gerald. It (he?) is mentioned often, but I am afraid to open it. I just wish someone would paraphrase for me!
2 Likes
Worth opening once.
But your computer may never recover - there are a couple of sad - Gerald broke my computer - threads.
1 Like