What is your Favorite Lifer from this week?

iNat taught me how to observe, that you need to look at everything and go out of comfort zone, seeing things that you don’t normally check, as when I was studying everyone was saying how iding insects is impossible through photos, that can’t be further from the truth, sure some things you learn that they can’t be ided, but often you think it can’t be, but then it’s ided by an expert. For you I would say check more plants, they may seem boring, but they hold the biggest part of easy bioiversity for your list.

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Maybe it is because I don’t go out to observe very often.

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I agree, I’ve started taking a great interest in plant biodiversity this year. Although, I’m disappointed to find most of the species I’ve observed are invasive. Two of the highlights of this week include the native Large White Trillium and Yellow Trout Lily.

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I like this one (it was so unexpected as just on Friday a friend introduced me to it for the first time). I found it growing near my house under a tangle of shrubs, California carpenteria:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/116164275
Such an unexpectedly pretty find.

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This would be a great one to post the week that it happened (sorry, cheating) but I got to see not one, not two, but three longfin inshore squid recently!!!

…and, of course, I made observations for each.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/114390110
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/114390114
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/114390117

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Squidpastry observing squid…

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“Top ten animals in history”

Ha!

It’s true, it’s true!

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Omg I think I just heard a Great Horned Owl!

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https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/116482135

Curious looking lily!

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So cool!!

Yeah, definitely.

I was down in the marsh near my house, showing the pond to a new friend, when I spotted a flash of yellow in the bushes. Expecting a goldfinch or some other familiar bird, I turned my camera on it, and found this! I’ve wanted to see a Yellow Warbler for a while but never knew where to look.


A minute or two later, my friend asked me if I could identify birds by call. I said I could, but not very many. Thinking about birdcalls reminded me that something was singing in a tree near us, which sounded very familiar but I wasn’t sure what it was. I pointed my camera at the tree and quickly discovered this: a Black-headed Grosbeak! It doesn’t quite count as a lifer since I have 2 observations of them already, but it’s the first one I’ve recognized in the field, so it felt the same.

I think my friend is good luck for birding!

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What? How? Yellow warblers are very common where ever you are in their range. :open_mouth:

Green heron!

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So this week I found a lifer, a fungal pathogen on peach, Peach Leaf Curl. The little peach sapling is spontaneous, so that is also somewhat interesting. This is only a block away from where I live.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/116631715

Oh, I see it turns out that I have seen this pathogen twice before, but I did not remember it at all. So it still seems like a lifer to me, even though technically it isn’t.

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I saw this box turtle yesterday. What surprised me was how cool its eyes were. I showed a zoomed/cropped version off to some friends and they thought belonged to an eagle

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Aren’t they common too?

For the second week of May, this fuzzy fly is new to me and my garden, where it is the 60th Diptera. I also saw only my second ever Ripiphorus rex today. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/116925975

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Your fly is actually quite cute, like a plush toy .

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