Ummmm… July for me? I’m not really a slowpoke, I just took a whole lot of photos this summer!
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When working 12+ hour shifts, doing nothing but iNaturalist between emergency calls!
Convincing coworkers to join iNat!
Getting friends and family to join!
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I like it when observations show up months later. Then, when I am identifying plants in the dead of winter, and scrolling through pages and pages of brown leaves and bare twigs, Lo and behold! A living, green plant! With flowers! That someone finally got around to posting! That I can identify! My heart rejoices!
That’s how I know I’m seriously into iNat…
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Once a month? I only photograph humans if they’re holding a fish so probably only a few times a year unless you count all the photos of people’s hands holding insects or tidepool creatures and then it probably goes up to about a dozen a month.
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Sometimes people ask for a photo, or my friends have terrible self-esteem about their body so I try to take some flattering photos of them to help them feel better about themselves.
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‘Unfortunately’ I can’t do that this year because I’m going to spend a month in the SW US in December :P
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Depending on what part of the Southwest you’re talking about, there’s likely to be a whole lot of things to photograph, and probably some lifer species.
I live in Colorado now (transplanted from Louisville, KY; talk about culture shock), but I’ve spent at least a little time in AZ, NM, TX, and SoCal. If you want to, you can drop me a message and I can give you some ideas on what might be around.
Aaaand, there’s another way that you know that you’re into iNat—offering to play tour guide! 
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Yo! I moved from Iowa to Louisville!
To be clear, I meant I can’t use the winter to go through my backlog of photos because I will be taking more photos in December. Below is my preliminary itinerary. I think I’ve covered a lot in terms of different environments, but if there’s any specific environment (or places near the city where it will be easy to get a species found only there), I’m open to suggestions.
San Bruno:
- Gerstle Park, San Rafael
- Farallon Islands
- Yosemite NP
- Julia Pfeiffer SP (California Condor)
- Año Nuevo State Park elephant seals (may possibly remove this one)
- Take the Amtrak to LA
Los Angeles:
- Joshua Tree NP
- Santa Catalina Island
- Santa Cruz Island (Island fox)
- Take Tufesa bus to Phoenix
Phoenix:
- El Rio Preserve
- Saguaro NP West
- Riparian Preserve
- Tres Rios
- Verde Canyon RR
- Take Tufesa bus to Vegas
Vegas:
- Ash Meadows preserve at Death Valley NP (pupfish)
- Bryce Canyon NP
- Zion NP
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You excitedly take home a large dead beetle you found, hoping to pin it, and when you approach it the next day, you find that it is crawling with mesostigs and some weird larvae that would be all over your room if you hadn’t carried a little airtight bottle with you when you found the beetle.
You aren’t discouraged, though, and proceed to dump the beetle out onto a paper towel, shake some of the mesotigs off, get one of the strange unidentified larvae off the walls of the bottle and onto the paper towel, take photos of the mesotigs and larvae for ID, take photos of the beetle, receive numerous paper cuts up and down your hands to get a toothpick to try to remove some of the decomposed beetle (From the underside) and larvae, but the larvae have disappeared further inside the beetle, hurriedly snatch up a mesotig trying to escape into your room, wash out the bottle to remove the parasites, set it to try, catch another mesotig, set the beetle in the bottle’s lid, throw away the paper towel with the parasites on it, a couple hours later find a mesotid on your desk, a couple hours later place the further decomposing beetle back into the dry bottle, and hope for the best, though you’re really not sure if the beetle can last and be safely pinned, because you don’t need those parasites in your insect collection.
You feel frustrated about this until you realize this would be a great story to share on the forum 
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Putting any dead finds in the freezer for a while before doing anything with them is probably a sensible course of action in the future. (Unless of course you want to see what uninvited guests they might have brought with them, in which case a sealed container seems advisable.)
A couple of freeze-thaw-freeze cycles is usually best to make sure you get any eggs or pupae that have managed to survive the cold in a dormant state.
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Hey, that’s a great idea! I didn’t think of that! I think that is what I will do, unless I can’t convince my family that a dead beetle with parasites should go in the fridge. Well, my brothers put their fishing worms in there, so I’ve got a case!
Edit: I got to put the beetle into the freezer!!! I asked my mom, and she just said “If it makes you happy.” Then she went off muttering about where she put the cheese, so I suppose she didn’t really care too much. So now there is a bottle with a dead beetle in the freezer, next to the ice and the ice cream 
Edit #2: Yay, I pinned the beetle! It almost lost its head, but it didn’t, so I’m satisfied :)
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You know you’re really into iNat when you engage in a conversation about how to consume hot chocolate the animal way
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/nature-inspired-comics/815/669
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You know when you are into iNate when you are frustrated that the Hairy Woodpecker got moved to to a different genus. Before if you could not tell the difference between them and Down woodpeckers you could put Dryobates woodpeckers and help others and yourself.
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Oh I know, I felt the same about the Australian treefrog taxon reorganization. I’m all for making the taxonomy as accurate as possible but… does it have to be this complicated 
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It’s not like I want inaccurate taxon placements … just when it is a placement that was really helpful it is frustrating!
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You know you’re seriously into iNat when …you have an armful of purring kitten who’s trying to play with the telephone cord, and you’re still managing to post observations.
Not very quickly, though.
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You know you’re seriously into iNat when you continue to get daily observations, even while on a Thanksgiving trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, which can get extremely cold and desolate during the winter.
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telephone cord? so I’m not the only one who still has a landline? 
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You know you’re seriously into iNat when friends now send you pictures of bugs that they’ve taken.
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You know you’re really into iNat when you bring it up during a student transfer interest call!
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