Sometimes it happens that we repeatedly take photos of an animal even though we already have a lot of observations of that species just to publish something, right?
Well, at least that’s what happens to me. For example: taking pictures of flies isn’t very interesting for me, but I keep doing it. Another very common example is taking photos of pigeons, sparrows… despite having several photos of them.
In my case, I’m bored of taking photos of pigeons, horneros, chimangos, flies… here are some links:
I skip anything that I have no interest for at the moment, I shot Pollenia in new places, near my house I’m like “hi-bye” to them, the more you make photos of them, the longer it will take you to edit it all. Of course I think if I need another five crow observations to the thousand of existing, but if it’s shot it’s uploaded one day. Isn’t it too early for you to be tired of one particular species?
I try to post something every day. So I photo birds and squirrels at my feeders so I’ll have something to post even if I don’t get out to photo other things.
In general, though, I don’t worry abut whether I’ve posted a species before. Each post says the organism was there then, and that’s what iNaturalist is about.
I’ll take anything anywhere: every observation imo has value so if it grabs me, I take it. With that said, I have a thing for whelk egg masss. No idea why but I can’t help myself uploading any I see.
It used to bother me to see my observation number growing much quicker than my number of species, now I’m just a bit more selective about photo quality with my most observed species but that’s about it. I think great cormorants might be the ones that feel the most like “filler” to me, maybe because I see a fair amount of them on my way to work and I haven’t been lucky enough to observe interesting behaviour.
Coots are one species where I usually think “I’m not going to take another picture, am I?”, then they do something outlandish or cute and I’m pretty much forced to concede.
Oh, definitely, especially if you’re mostly birding/herping/mammaling (is that last one even a thing?). We have one iNatter in my region who does an amazing job with mostly insects, she’s at 4100 species in the area and it’s almost unfathomable to me. I was instantly a lot more engaged when I stopped chasing numbers, which is very addictive at the beginning when they come fast, and instead focused more on behaviour and learning more about the places I visit.
I upload every single Botany Bay Diamond Weevil I find, in a friendly competition with @reiner to see who can observe the most. Getting pummelled at the moment unfortunately
I photographed a Canada Goose for two days straight last week (pretty sure it was the same goose… it looked like it was nesting) to try and maintain a week’s long streak.
Last year, I uploaded a bunch of American grows because I was hoping ONE of them would be a raven, a species I haven’t observed before.
I do this with certain animals that I’ve come to routinely expect to be at a certain place at a certain time; i.e. in my local pond there was an American Bullfrog (whom the locals and I called Mr. Froggy) that would routinely appear in the corner by the cove so he starred on my iNat for a while. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/118730963
^ isn’t he handsome?
So, I guess I don’t want to completely right off the time I spent looking for the elusive Timemas when I at least saw several pumpkins gall wasps or lots of erinem mites.
I used to not bother if it was something I’ve seen before many times- but I’ve learned not to do that now. Multiple times, I’ve taken pictures of a very boring and generic looking ant or fly only for it to be an entirely unique species. And regardless- the data is always good for iNaturalist, whether you’ve seen lots of it already or not.
I also accidentally became the top observer for both Bibio femoratus and Bibio articulatus just this past week due to my resolve to not ignore repeat species. A fun bonus!
Lastly, the iNaturalist achievements service by MyWild is very addicting, and new observations always have the potential to further my progression there. There’s really no downside aside from a bit of an aching back c:
I post a lot of sightings of the Southwestern Snake-necked Turtle (Chelodina Oblonga) but these are only a fraction of those I see. I’m currently building a map on all wetlands in Perth from the Swan river to Moore River, as there currently exists no present/absent data on the species.
It’s a very simple observational study so if I don’t see one somewhere I will return two more times, but still if I don’t see one, this absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It’s more to gather conclusive evidence of all the places we know the species to inhabit, so that those populations can be protected.
I do three wetlands/ponds/lakes etc. per night and will post one if it’s there’s no record already on iNat of them living there; this way the data is immediately available as opposed to making people wait the 9-12 months it’s going to take me map all the observations.
I don’t really take a photo to have a new observation (though I also try to maintain my streak), but because I just can’t resist some animals. I’ve told myself that I now only take a photo of a stonechat if I get it frame-filling, but also e.g. goldfinches or serins are always nice to look at.
