You know you're seriously into iNat when

[carnifex]

Especially when it adds a new phylum to the personal list

[tripleaxel]

@jdjohnson

And if you do ever figure out how to pronounce it you spend serious time repeating it in your head so that you remember it.

I don’t know why but i’m going to remember " Cytisus scoparius " for the rest of my life maybe cos I spend so much time pulling it out on Quail Island

[crellow]

But was your search successful?!

[peywey]

Quite so. And I found quite a variety of species too.

[birdwhisperer]

Lucky! I only get Painted Turtles and maybe someone’s escaped slider.

[peywey]

Well I’m in Texas where there’s a decent variety of species. I get Sliders, Snappers, and the occasional map. My county also has the puzzle of determining whether I’m looking as a Texas Cooter or a River Cooter as the populations meet in my area.

[tanyuu]

You learn how to spell difficult words because you’ve had to type them out all the time for garden plants, like chysanthemum, hydrangea, etc.

[tiwane]

@aggie_wildlifer

You go on a family road trip across several states and at each highway rest stop you find several observations. I can’t imagine the thoughts going through the fellow travelers minds as I scour the restroom building walls for cryptic critters or get down on all fours to get an observation of a plant in the lawn that is new to me.

There’s a place on iNat that covers a good number of US highway rest areas: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/us-highway-rest-areas-work-in-progress

[janetwright]

At 4 AM you find the iNaturalist site is down, and your first thought is “what will happen to my multi-day observation streak?”

[kiwifergus]

@janetwright

what will happen to my multi-day observation streak?

Borrow Tony’s time-travelling device
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/hypothetical-solutions-to-keeping-my-streak-alive-silliness/9253/55
:)

[astra_the_dragon]

… you get twitchy walking past fruiting grass because you’ve been learning how to ID them and want to upload them to iNat, and I mean does it really matter if you’re five more minutes late to calculus?

[tripleaxel]

When you’ve had a really stressful day then you go outside and start taking pics for iNat and you suddenly relax and start feeling way better.

[bookworm86]

It probably matters to you’re professor (but I think like that as I walk to work in the mornings - I resist the urge cause I need the job, lol).

[inasiebert]

… you laugh about a meme with an owl a good friend forwarded to you - and than tell them that it shows a different species than the meme allegedly does. And your friend replies: “Of course…”
(For readers speaking German: a flying owl depicted as “Huhu”, wordplay on “Uhu” - Eurasian Eagle-Owl - “saying hello”. But the meme showed a Northern Hawk Owl. Which I have observed twice, and both times I will never forget.)

[mira_l_b]

I’ll trade you one pair of pine warblers if you can offer a new-to-me warbler from your yard! (For humor purposes only…no warblers were harmed in the making of this terrible joke)

[kiwifergus]

@mira_l_b

terrible joke)

I dunno… I laughed! I’m trying to imagine anyone wanting my mynahs!

[fffffffff]

Anyone, they’re adorable!

[zabdiel]

You see a picture of some animals and think about uploading it to iNaturalist, then realise it’s a random windows lock screen photo of some wildebeest.

[kiwifergus]

More that they’re just so “common”, as in they are everywhere here in Gisborne… Easier to get observations of than seagulls!

[fffffffff]

I was told we had a small population of escaped birds in Moscow for quite many years before one winter was too harsh for them to survive.