What's your worst/most embarrassing ID mistake?

Nature Talk
42

Bean goose is now one of my favorite species names. I will add it to the list of things I call my cats.

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43

I’ve been using the ios app exclusively, and started to notice signs that there may be limitations so I joined on my laptop today, and VOILA, there’s so much here! I wish there was a notice or something to ios users like “If you’re enjoying this, you’re in for a real treat if you open it on your computer!”

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44

Ditto! I was pretty surprised there is little to no mention of any other facilities on that app. I cannot imagine why there is not even a link to the website from the iOS app in the About or Help page.

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45

I distinctly remember being surprised that nobody had put an ID on this one yet while browsing the unknowns in the Needs ID queue. I think it’s more funny than embarrassing so have a good laugh at my expense:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/30892432

It taught me three things:

  1. Don’t attempt to ID from thumbnails.
  2. Probably should stick to plants.
  3. Some stuff will linger in Needs ID for a good while, but once you put an obviously wrong ID on it, it will quickly get corrected.
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46

A fun thing to do is go through your maverick ID’s and correct them - if they are correct, I tag the others who got it wrong.

You can find them all by replacing your username with mine in this URL:

https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications?user_id=alan_rockefeller&category=maverick

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47

Thanks! Just corrected 2 maverick IDs.

48

Good suggestion! Also good for picking up problems due to taxon swap like this one was: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9435437

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49

Thank you for that tip about finding mavericks. I just fixed 7 old mavericks that I did not know about. As I mentioned above, if you are using the iOS there is currently no way to know about mavericks or withdraw IDs. I assume a future update to the app will fix that, though.

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50

Ha, it took me longer then I care to admit to get it.

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51

My most common mistakes since joining iNat have been the “This looks exactly like that other observation, so I’ll identify it as the same species” type. Like this one: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/57555100

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52

I misidentify humans all the time, including some I’ve met personally. My wife helps me with those IDs. But I don’t put them on iNat.

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54

Oh, this caddisfly from spring 2020:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/48309373
When I photographed it, I got stuck in my head that it was a moth and kept going down the moth path for some reason. Embarrassing for me, as I have been working on insects in this area since the 1990s. I posted the first caddisfly to BugGuide back in 2004. Just had “moth” stuck in my head from the initial impression in the field. Friends on Flickr and iNaturalist corrected me.
On a related note, I have seen even experienced professional entomologists make ID mistakes on BugGuide. Those folks are used to working from pinned specimens, and identifying a photograph of a living creature can be quite a different problem.

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55

I can’t decide between 2 worst. I’ve been IDing local unknowns for about a year and a half. For some reason emerging leaves of hickories and buckeyes attract a lot of attention. After weeks of confidently identifying what I thought was buckeyes, I realized they were really hickories. I had to look thru hundreds of IDs to find and change the numerous incorrect ones. Luckily no-one seems to have noticed. Then this spring, more embarrassingly, it was pointed out to me that I had confused Carolina with Virginia (those southern states run together in my mind) I had to look thru a thousand IDs to find all the Virginia Spring Beauties I had mis identified as Carolina. This is bound to happen to me again. Maybe in another thread someone can tell me if there is any way to sort my IDs by name or search for a taxon name in the list of my IDs?

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56

At this point I’m shameless at the fact I’m bad with terns and sandpipers. They confuse the bejesus out of me and I try but I’m basically 50/50 or worse on getting them right.

The most annoying mis-ID’s I make involve fat fingering the autocomplete suggestions as I’m typing something in.

EDIT: Swallows and swifts too. So many of them are blue and orange and shaped the same!

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57

Just recently I identified a Green Frog as a Bullfrog…

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58

Before I knew more about Carabidae, I would occasionally ID Anisodactylus binotatus, and Calathus fuscipes, both as Anisodactylus dulcicollis.

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59

You can search for id taxon, but you should look up in the forum for the needed url, I don’t remember it.

60

Fortunately, “Homo sapiens” would suffice here at least…

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61

I am new on iNat so if you run across an observation of mine (I haven’t made many yet.) please feel free to correct me. If I don’t understand the correction, I will message you with questions. I was recently corrected when I IDed an exotic ladybug as a native one and thanked the corrector and explained that I was using an ID page that only had natives. It was a great learning experience for me.

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62

I think you are looking at this the wrong way! Of course you have made mistakes, we all do. After making a mistake stop and analyze why you made it: Ignorance? too hasty? arrogance? wanting to be the best? it actually doesn’t matter why you made the mistake, it does matter what you learn about yourself! Once you know that, you won’t need to make the same mistake. It really is that simple. Don’t waste time feeling embarrassed it will stop you from progressing to excellence. I teach beginning birders and one of the first things I tell them is not to worry about making mistakes! Nobody becomes competent at whatever they do without having made many, many mistakes. My biggest mistakes are usually made when I am birding with better birders - I confess, I do get a little embarrassed!
Fizzy

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