When I lived in Ohio it was Tipularia discolor and Goodyera pubescens. On days where I could not find a single other thing to observe I would snap a picture of one of those and just upload so I’d have one observation for the day. I still made sure not to use the same plant I had used before (but there’s millions so not hard). They are especially helpful in winter when most other plants are gone but a patch of snow-free ground under a pine tree usually still has them growing.
Nowadays Neottia nidus-avis and Xanthoria parietina fill the same role - the latter has the advantage that they are often visible even when there’s a 3-foot snow cover.
I’ve noticed many more stoneflies this year than ever before on iNat, especially in Massachusetts. The number of observations within the genus Taenioipteryx (in MA) was around 10-15 over 7 years just a few years ago, and now it’s over 30 - just a month or so later. Do you have any idea why that could be?
I take photos of anything that attracts my attention and will sit still long enough. Although lately I try not to repeat too many photos of the same species of odonate in one day. Like yesterday, I could have taken dozens of photos of Ischnura posita but I only took a few as a representative sample. Later in the season I may reduce that down to just one because frankly some species are just under foot all the time and despite being photogenic I do like to have a few new observations once in a while !
This season, the cool organism for me is Eastern Skunk Cabbage. As far as animals go, I’m always down to photograph/record nearly every bird and/or amphibian I see; which isn’t a whole lot, but I find it’s a good way to document what I know can be found locally, unlike mammals and reptiles, which either move around too much or are simply too rare for me to reliably find in one area.
Honestly, I’m not sure. I figured some insect populations bloom some years and lower other years. Invasive LDD (gypsy) moth caterpillars, for example, were once extremely abundant in New England. Now, however, I haven’t seen them in years.
I see stoneflies regularly in my yard every year, with no sign of decline. My thoughts are that the influx of observations is likely due the recent increase in new users. It could also be that they emerge en masse and are easy to find and photograph.
My go-to if I couldn’t find anything more interesting used to be a slug or snail. They are easy to photograph. I don’t even need to get my camera out because my phone works just fine. Over the past year though slugs have been few and far between. I’m hoping I don’t have to find a new slow-day go-to.
For me, infinity calligrapher flies!! I really haven’t done too many observations on them, but am currently leading in Bow-shaped calligraphers (Toxomerus arcifer) by quite the large margin (surprisingly).
To my understanding, their population pretty much has only recently grown in the South Florida area, but it seems to have grown a lot. I have very few other species of calligraphers at my home, although it seems the Florida Calligrapher has very dense populations nearby. I’ve stopped uploading so many; I kind of went on a craze for the first 20 because I didn’t know such a thing would be so prominent in my area.
I guess I’m partial to monarchs and I always stop and check for caterpillars when I find milkweed. I feel there are so few of them around these days I have to document every last one of them. They’re my top observed species, the rest of my top 15 are all plants. Coming in at #16 is white-tailed deer, and #41 is the cardinal, a lot them at my bird feeder. That’s the only three animals among my top 60 most observed species. The rest are plants and one lone lichen.
Geography/habitat matters most: In my yard and area I only report something 1 time unless they are very uncommon. Common plants or animals are just that - common and multiple reports does not advance anyone’s research. That is also the reason I travel the area, in search of less common things in different habitats. That has research value - the reason we iNat exists in the first place.
I know staff has stated iNat’s primary purpose is to connect people with nature; has it ever been revealed that the original build was created for research data, and then the purpose/focus changed afterward?.
Last year my goal was to capture biodiversity on local preserves, so I took a lot of photos and documented something like 400 species and 2000 observations, thinking that biodiversity is the number of species in both space and time (sort of relativistic). There were a lot of some common birds, such as Acorn Woodpeckers, White Crowned Sparrows, etc. and I could have taken many more of Canadian Geese. This year, I am targeting my observations towards species I rarely saw last year, such as Downy Woodpeckers and now, a Western Pond Turtle. Sometimes I will post an observation just because I happen to get what I think is a good picture as a way of thanking the subject.
Both helping people connect with nature and creating a useful database for research were goals from the beginning of iNaturalist. When those goals are in conflict, connecting people to nature has priority.
I hope you have a magnifying glass or macro lens available. I’ve documented about 1,200 species in my garden and house and 75% are invertebrates, of which I’d guess 50% are less than 1 cm in size.
I seem to be the “Top Observer” of one of my favorite birds, the Black Brant (subspecies of Brant), and a rather stunning marine worm, Nereis vexillosa. It’s hard not to photograph them :-)
