I regularly go for walk around my apartments/society and it never fails to surprise me!
from hammerhead worms, mantises and beetles to snakes, skinks and small rodents and bunch of other beings too! its surprisingly biodiverse
If I were to describe the habitat its mostly dry deciduous but explodes with life during monsoons, which enables all sorts of critters.
I am curious as to what sort of places do ppl here go to for inatting, and is there any particular habitat that occurs there? and what sort of creatures do you find!
any questions towards me are welcome too! Im sure I haven’t phrased this topic well enough
Like you I tend to look around my residence though I take quite long walks, weather permitting. I also steal moments when out and about.
I live and iNat in a tropical dry broadleaf forest, though as of about a week ago we are in our rainy season and having a record breaking one, with significant flooding. (Yesterday the governor declared a state of emergency and shut all non-essential economic activities, schools, etc.)
What I see varies on the season, with different things seen during the dry, hot (45+ regularly) months, for example, than during these wet days, but generally there is always something flowering which I quite like. Because our climate can be harsh, some blooms last only a day or even a few hours. Currently rain lilies are everywhere!
I’ve not really been to anywhere other than urban environments that much, but in my opinion forests and waterside habitats (e.g. beaches, lakeshores, streams) are best. Mostly because you get a lot of animals you’d hardly ever see at home (or, indeed, anywhere outside their habitat), even up to entire phyla such as flatworms (I only saw those, and some water snails, and Velia, and leeches, and mayfly larvae and so on because of a roadtrip to Scotland where we stayed by a loch).
Unfortunately, waterside environments are kind of sparse around me, with merely one small stream in the local nature reserve, but at least there’s a large lake around half an hour’s drive away with some cool stuff like alderflies and oil beetles.
Residencies always hold surprises! My recent discovery was a jungle palm squirrel in a plot right next to where I live. I had confused it with a normal three striped palm squirrel since they’re all I’ve seen around here, but got a new species thanks to @doctor_ankur_mishra who pointed it out.
I also go up to this small hill nearby and end up pausing every five minutes to take pictures of plants, bugs, birds, for iNat. This might be annoying for the other visitors on the hill, who are usually morning walkers. Although at times it does feel great to see someone else, usually strangers to me, walking around with a camera or photographing something other than people :)
ahh same here, there is a small lake here (and by small I mean pretty small, its either a small lake or a big pond) and its not really accessible.
I remember having a mini-tidepooling session in Andaman islands and man a few hours was NOT enough I saw all sorts of crazy lifeforms for the first time there
niceee, even I have a resident jungle palm squirrel in my kerala house (I primarily dont live there)
I always thought they were regular 3 striped until I got a decent pic which motivated me to upload it on inat hehe, same pinch over here then!
I relate to this so much, theres a urban-jungle type of area near my house where everyone goes for morning walks, and then theres me with my camera sitting on a roadside taking pics of a butterfly. Apart from this, in my society everyone knows me as that fellow who comes to take pics of bugs, the security guards once caught a rat snake and waited for me to pass by so that they could show me and I could take pics!
i’m in an east coast US suburb, so bits of broadleaf deciduous forests and old fields between seas of concrete/asphalt
the majority of my observations are from the same park, very close to my work and home. it’s woods (mostly oak-hickory) and fields. it provides a good variety of arthropods (all i pay attention to, really), though the forests are not the healthiest (on formerly-agricultural land, with lots of invasive species, many of the historical tree species can’t grow back (namely ash and chestnut)).
the park is also the site of some US civil war battles back in the 1860s, and not an iNat hotspot… so i top the leaderboards for the park’s iNat project lol
I never really search around home. The city and the suburbs just don’t have the biodiversity or usually the specific taxa that I’m looking for, and being out in the city around the people and the noise tends to be unpleasant for me. I prefer the coast, the mountains, and the forest. I lived in Sacramento, CA for the last six years, so I was in fairly close proximity to all three. About every other weekend I’d go somewhere to hike and explore. I visited Point Reyes Nat’l Seashore pretty frequently, also the Sonoma coast, Calaveras Big Trees State Park, and the parks around Lake Tahoe (usually just before the campgrounds opened or just after they closed for the year to avoid the crowds). Those were all within easy daytripping distance. If I didn’t mind driving a little further, I could make it to Lassen Volcanic Nat’l Park or the area around Mt Shasta, or do a drive through the Avenue of the Giants and still make it home before midnight. Unfortunately, I had to move away last year, and my options are far more limited now. I’ve only found three places in Kansas that I really like: Kanopolis State Park (lacustrine environment with some interesting sandstone geology), Cheyenne Bottoms near Great Bend (A nice large wetland preserve), and Chaplin Nature Center near Ark City (forest, prairie, and riparian environments near the Arkansas river).
I tend to go often to a small forest (oak and beech mostly) with a small river, near to the city. It’s nice that I can go just walking from my place, but I also enjoy going to some other forests and I tend to prioritise those that are easily accessible by train. Public transport is free here, so often even for a short walk, it’s a motivation to take the train a go to a new place.
I realise I observe and see differently when returning to a familiar forest or when going to a new forest. Both are nice!
I realise I didn’t describe the habitat, so here we go:
A typical forest here is a temperate deciduous woodland dominated by deciduous trees with a few conifers in some managed areas. M
The understory contains shrubs, young trees, ferns, mosses, and of course, seasonal wildflowers.
Very common wildlife includes roe deers, squirrels, foxes, herons, kingfishers, tits, voles, and woodpeckers. The habitat is generally cool, humid (specially in the valleys), and rich in leaf litter and fungi (including tasty ones).
I live in the hill country, which is really cool because it creates a bunch of microbiomes which makes Inating super interesting. The two most common biomes are juniper savannas and cypress creeks, both result in the ability to see a bunch of different organisms from 2 different habitats in one walk! Many organisms won’t travel the few feet it takes to change habitats which is really interesting (to me at least)
I typically walk around the hills next to where I work at lunch or after work. It’s a sagebrush steppe. I generally run into beetles, pollinators, flies, ants, spiders, snakes, lizards, broken glass bottles, and, well, a lot of sagebrush.
I seee, majority of my observations are from my own nearby areas that I visit daily (2049/3019 obs)
very interesting! Is it like a national park? or a regular park
I unfortunately cannot travel on my own since I am only a college student (in a few months atleast), but my area is surprisingly biodiverse compared to other areas that my friends live in, in the same city so I am pretty satisfied.
what sort of restrictions are there in such a habitat? like, theres not much of a wetland here, or atleast not in my knowledge so, how do you explore such a place? are you able to go near the water body itself?
Cheyenne Bottoms is a large wetland split into several different units (think like a large pond with dikes separating different sections), and it’s multi-use so access depends on which unit you are in. Some units allow hunting for waterfowl at certain times of the year and can be entered and traversed by boat. The main water body, however, does not allow hunting or boat access. There are no walking trails in the preserve (though there is a visitor center with a short nature trail just outside of it), but there is a ring road that goes around the main pond that you can drive, and you can pull over along the road to get out and look. Birdwatchers tend to stick to the road and use binoculars to observe the birds out on the water. There also tend to be lots of birds as well as reptiles and amphibians in the canals and ditches that connect the different units.
I saw all sorts of crazy lifeforms for the first time there