My rarest animal/plant is the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum floridanus) with around 100 individuals. Second rarest is the Red-cockaded Woodpecker with an estimated 12,500 individuals. Rarest plant I have seen is Texas trailing phlox (Phlox nivalis ssp. texensis); no idea on the population size but it is federally endangered.
Other rarities near me that I hope to see sometime in the near future are the Whooping Crane (around 600 individuals I think), the endangered Navasota ladies-tresses orchid (Spiranthes parksii), and the threatened Neches River rose-mallow (Hibiscus dasycalyx).
I then spent the next three days searching from dawn to dusk, on every possible flowering tree, expanding in a spiral, on foot, as well as additional likely sites over the next couple of months, but had no more luck. Thereās certainly more out there, but nobodyās looking.
(deleted previous post because I meant to reply to the thread in general, not just rinaturalist)
Sweet, thanks. A little anticlimatic it was, if casual, a symbiotic mite on a hisser, wild a shell I found on the side of a beach house from a previous occupant
I would have to say the rarest animal Iāve seen is probably a snow leopard in northern Pakistan. I saw it for mere seconds but I can remember it very clearly. It was on the other side of a very steep and narrow valley. I choked down my desire to point it out to my companions. I feared that word would get around and a poacher would try to kill it.
Are more likely just because there tend to be not so many people, looking for invertebrates in generally remote locations. Like I am 10/11 obs of Pristobunus acentrus. Which seems not uncommon, but in my experience harvestmen, especially smaller Laniatores are often not on peoples radar. But then even looking for them, they can be hard to spot.
I think the Bengal Slow Loris, Ganges River Dolphin, Irrawaddy Dolphin, Hualapai Buckmoth have to be some of mine.
According to that nifty āleast observationsā link the Craneopsis unicolor is my rarest. I have one of 2 observations of it and mine is the only one that is RG. Followed by Craugastor tarahumaraensis where I have 1 of 5. Almost tripped over that little thing when it jumped out of my steps. Finding it allowed a photo of a live specimen to end up in my friends book about herps of Sonora so it was a special find.
It was! The younger ones would stick their entire face out of the water, but they stayed at a distance so most my photos are horrid. But I saw them so it counts, lol
I would assume the rarest thing I have uploaded onto Inat is probably the Yelkouan shearwater which has approximately 20,000 individuals in the wild and its quite rare to see one on the surface of the water near the shore so my observation is pretty rare, Its considered Vulnerable by the IUCN red list. Another bird that I photographed is the redwing which is quite common worldwide but can be fairly rare in the UK. Also I have photographed the red-backed shrike which is rare. The peregrine falcon has a large range but it can be hard to spot.
I donāt know if itās the rarest animal Iāve ever seen cause itās got several thousand observations worldwide, but the Hyaline grass bug has only been seen 50 times in Argentina and just once in my hometown and that observation is mine with RG .
And I have many other examples of species that have only been seen once in my local area and the observation is mine:
Calochortus tiburonensis is an amazing lily thatās known only from a single population in a popular Bay Area park, and I made my sort of annual trek there to see it yesterday. Thankfully itās quite easy to see next to trails and there are a lot of docents and signs there to reduce off-trail wandering. The docents I talked to said trampling was much lower this year. Hopefully that trend continues.
Itās not ārareā on iNat, though, there are nearly 850 observations of it. Amazing to think it wasnāt described until 1973.
I was lucky enough to document the first āarrivalā of an invasive seed on an island where they had not been observed, as it washed up from the sea one stormy evening. I believe the salt water had killed the seed, thankfully, but still an interesting note.
.