You know you're seriously into iNat when

[janetwright]

Actually I was about to ask her for a recommendation. All those tunnels and crevices to explore!

[RoseBones]

It’s actually funny, it’s so easy to photograph birds for me but I wanna photograph more cool insects

[RoseBones]

When you’re driving and see a really cool bird on a wire but don’t have a camera or time to stop and it’s all you think about all day.

When you live in a suburban area and frequently get asked why you keep “taking pictures of my house”

When part of your daily routine is transferring photos from your camera to your electronics to post on INat

When you look at old observations you’ve made and wonder “how did I not know what that was”

[afid]

When you look at old observations you’ve made and wonder “how did I not know what that was”

I have definitely done that.

[irag]

You’re walking through the apt with a sprig of parsley for a Seder plate and you are wondering if they’re compound leaves.

[kiwifergus]

@susanhewitt
As you come up to CNC 2019 you find yourself cursing the lack of weeds in your garden https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/northern-hemisphere-spring-2019-phenology-discussion/710/40

[KitKestrel]

This is SO not a problem for me lol!

[kiwifergus]

me neither! But unfortunately my city is not partaking…

[alexis_orion]

…You take nearly 100 photos of a single bug, only to discover that you missed a crucial feature for ID.

…You still take photos of the most common species, because you never know, it just might be something new!

[iPhil]

… being disappointed by the local Society for Nature Conservation for creating their own app instead of cooperating with iNat and making you upload the observations twice.

… taking pictures of plants you never thought you’d do while remembering the times complaining about your father photographing too many plants.

[charlie]

… being disappointed by the local Society for Nature Conservation for creating their own app instead of cooperating with iNat and making you upload the observations twice.

there are like 500 inaturalist clones out there. They always take a bunch of time and money to develop and all fizzle pretty fast. It’s a really hard thing to do regionally or on a taxon specific basis and really there’s no point anyway

[amberenergy]

@KitKestrel LOL not for that! It is basically a camera on the end of a tube that you can use to view inside water, bird houses, holes, etc. on the screen of your phone.

[amberenergy]

@janetwright I got a cheap one on Amazon for $35. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MYTHWK4/

[jakubmamulski]

…you’re able to track your hikes exclusively using your very own observations
…your significant other tells you to leave that bloody magpie in peace while walking to a store

[janetwright]

@jakubmamulski

…

I figure if I am accused of a crime I can point to my time-stamped, geo-tagged observations as an alibi!

[upupa-epops]

Since there have been comments on other threads about the lack of things like this here

…you spend hours identifying things for other people when you don’t feel like doing schoolwork and still want to feel productive

Edit: A few more from others hidden up in the thread:

@biosam

… your idea of a fun Friday night becomes poring over field guides and identification keys to identify obscure organisms.

@jonathan142

… you can positively identify your specialty species from a blurry photo.

@cygnusa

… you find yourself eagerly IDing images of huge Australian Huntsman Spiders that a mere six months ago would have given you nightmares.

@nathantaylor

…your taxon of interest has nearly 15,000 observations, but you feel really surprised when one gets past you without giving it a proper ID or filing it in your mind to ID later.
…iNaturalist has led you to specialize in a larger group of organisms than you would have before leading you to go from restricting yourself to a group with 300-400 species to a group with over 2,000 that includes the previous group.
…you spend hours writing journal posts to save time when identifying to keep from writing down the distinguishing characteristics again.
…the first thing you do in the morning and one of the last things you do at night is to see if there are any more members from your taxon of interest that have been posted.

@KitKestrel

You are determined to plough through and ID 50 observations, only to discover 30 minutes later that you now know about 14 subspecies of some plant and you’re still on the first obs.

I can relate to several of these.

[charlie]

i do lots of IDs all winter when there’s nothing to add because we live in a snowy cold climate and my hands freeze off if i try to use my phone when it’s 0F

[afid]

i do lots of IDs all winter when there’s nothing to add because we live in a snowy cold climate and my hands freeze off if i try to use my phone when it’s 0F

Yep, I can definitely relate!

[molanic]

I saw the comment on the other thread too about the lack of comments here about identifying. I didn’t mention it before because it’s not the most exciting aspect of the site for me. But, I do have about the same number of identifications for others as observations of my own. Like others I tend to do more identifying in the winter when it’s miserable outside… or when I’m trying to procrastinate doing something else. It’s always easier to justify procrastinating when you’re actually doing something productive or helpful!

I’d do more identifying if it was easier to do on a tablet. I’ve had some long identifying sessions on the computer where my neck was really killing me and I was like “just one more page and then I’ll stop.”

A few times I came across things that were definitely misidentified, but that I was totally unfamiliar with. They were so cool though that I spent way too long identifying them.

[danaleeling]

Since there have been comments on other threads about the lack of things like this here

That was me and I stand corrected! Thanks! I have more identifications than observations, I find working on identifying to be both challenging and fun. When I work on identifications, I learn more about the plants around me. I did start working on some identifications one morning and when I next looked up I saw the sun settling in the west. Just one more page…