Inspired by this topic and realising that cool places to visit can also be nearby I created this topic with a question: what’s your favourite iNatting place in your country? Mine is the Danube Delta and I really
want to go there one day.
What’s yours?
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Bonus question: what’s your favourite lifer seen in your chosen place?
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For places I’ve inatted in NZ, probably Fiordland National Park. For places I haven’t inatted, probably Kahurangi National Park or the Subantarctic Islands.
My favourite lifer at Fiordland would have to be the Kea.
My yard.
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Lobau (Danube-Auen National Park). Unfortunately they are building a highway through it which will destroy parts of it (and it’s very tiny already to begin with) and will decrease species diversity of the remainder a lot due to added pollution and lowered ground water level. Currently it has 22 species of orchid, many of which I have never seen anywhere else.
A spot up the road from me in Sierra Morena. It is mostly used for low intensity hunting, so is relatively unaffected by the curse of olive plantations and cereal crops. It has a good diversity of plants (not really my interest), but that provides a diversity of insects and their parasitoids and predators! It’s close enough that I can afford to go there every weekend; arrive and pop up a light sheet, walk in the woods naturalising, come back to a full light sheet, chill for a couple of hours documenting the UV-lovers, sleep there restfully, have another morning walk naturalising, and then go back down the hill to the city to start my weekend as a ‘normal’ person.
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Same ! I’d say my garden :)
My favorite spot is this waterfall trail. Mostly of the registrations made there are from me.
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I can’t pick a favorite spot in my country, because the United States is big and I have been to many parts of it (48 of the 50 states). But my favorite spot locally is the greenway in my town, just a few blocks from my apartment. As often as I have walked there, I find new-to-me species almost every time.
In my “other country,” the Dominican Republic, my favorite place is also close to home: the majority of my obesrvations from there have been made within the Cambium parcel. I constantly find new-to-me species there, too, even though the original forest was long ago replaced with agricultural and pasture land.
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Living/Working in a National Park, my default would be my national park. Without driving there is several close by options.
I am quite partial to Algidia viridata bicolor. I have 15/19 obs for the subspecies https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=411513 (or 18/25 for the species)
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Any of the old growth or second growth conifer woodland near me. Thankfully I live in western Washington State, so there’s lots to choose from! One particular park (my fav) has yielded me a bucket of chanterelles in the summer, and a whole bunch of lifers. Not just fungi, but plants and animals as well :)
I absolutely adore NZ, I really want to go there some day. To my northern-hemisphere American brain it feels so far off and exotic. Not to mention it looks gorgeous! The Fiordlands look amazing. It would be a dream come true to get to go down there one day and see and photograph what cool types of fungi and other things are living there!
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Cortinarius acutus.
the southern desert, most certainly. It may not look like much during the day, but the nocturnal and crepuscular life is vibrant and fascinating. I love seeing how every life form has adapted to the severe environment.
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I’m noticing a recurring theme here:
If “in your country” was replaced with “in your local area,” many of the answers would be the same. Isn’t it interesting the way we conceptualize “our country” this way? Unless we live in a tiny country like Andorra or Monaco, our country will be filled with many places that are not in our local area; and yet, our local area tends to become our favorite because of the sheer amount of time we spend there relative to anywhere else.
Even if we used to live in, and love, someplace else, doesn’t our favorite shift over time the longer we are in our new locality?
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I think our ‘favorite places’ are always changing as we experience and explore new places. I’m sure I’d have a different favorite spot if I could go and explore anywhere I wanted. I’d say my favorite spot, then, would be somewhere I’ve always wanted to go, like the mountains of New Zealand, or New Caledonia. I’m absolutely sure I’d find plenty to marvel at in both of these places. Even more local places I have yet to visit, like the coasts out west of the Olympic Mountains right here in Washington state. But many of us have never been to these dream destinations, especially the more distant ones, because they’re just not that realistic as of now. I think convinience begins to play a crucial role in deciding what our favorite places to iNat are when we ask questions like this, thus more convinient places are likely to be people’s favorites.
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The best place is where I am, is something that I would be able to agree with. When I travel, my fave spots are also likely where I am, though I tend to be selective with sites. But I cant just go back to sites multiple flights away, so I wouldn’t consider them fave spots though they are awesome ones.
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I have a few that I can’t choose between. Two roadcruising spots that I have found several lifers on. My neighborhood, which I have found several lifers and I can find snakes quite easily in. Then the Oxley Nature Center in Tulsa, super cool place, tons of animals, have gotten tons of lifers there.