… when you regret that you’re not allowed to enter the municipal dump. I saw cattle egrets and gulls from far, but has anyone ever studied the insect fauna?
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This might be my favorite gull + waste disposal story: a gull hitched a ride on a compost truck across the bay bridge. https://www.ehn.org/gull-compost-truck-ride-2586118053.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2
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You may talk with workers/administration, bird research is sometimes allowed maybe insect research too.
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They were very abundant in Sydney when I was growing up. I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or dismayed (“they’ve been introduced here too!”) when I saw one in Hamilton a couple of years ago. In suburban Sydney in recent decades it seems like they’ve been displaced by the noisy miners (native honeyeaters), which are more aggressively territorial. Yes the miners are native, but it’s a bit of a shame because they’ve pushed out a lot of the smaller native birds from suburban backyards too.
Naturalists know better, but people always think they’re related because they have a similar stature and appearance and because the name sounds the same.
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… you see something that’s too small for your camera to focus on. I have Ostracods (ie seed shrimp) that managed to get into my aquarium, and while I can see them when they’re doing their distinctive swim against the glass, they’d just show up as a random dot if I took a photo. Same thing for the occasional detritus worm. XD
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I was so disappointed! There was a flattened dead rat in the parking lot, but by the time I parked, got out my camera, and returned to it, somebody had cleaned it away!
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. . . when you fill out a bracket for Tid-Marsh Madness instead of March Madness!
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Lol, this sounds like me!
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Lol that is what I do! With spiders though.
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When your workplace closes for a week and a half due to concerns over covid-19 and your first thought is, “I have free time now but it’s still too cold for most insects and spiders to be out. What a wasted opportunity.”
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You can volunteer to moderate the forum? Is there an age limit? I’m 14.
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I think it’s probably less an age limit (do they even ask?) and more your forum and/or site usage history especially with regards to comments, and availability.
That being said, it could be that announcing yourself as a minor may have “informally” disqualified you.
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Which temperatures do you have now? I see flies coming from sleep since +5C, plus many invertebrates can be found even in 0 temperatures under rotten leaves.
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Springtails!!!
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Maybe. That’s ok, though. If they want to that’s great if not that’s fine. Thank you for answering! ;-)
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You can always do IDs!
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The temperature here has been -5C to +5C recently. To clarify, I wasn’t suggesting that there were no invertebrates out, just that the number was much lower than in warmer months.
It also doesn’t help me that the government has been closing off access to parks, forests, and mountains as a way to keep people from accidentally infecting one another. Which is not to say that it’s impossible to find anything, only that it’s more difficult than it would be under normal circumstances.
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I’ve added more than 1,000 IDs and quite a few ‘Welcome to iNat’ messages over the past 10 days. 
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Good point.
It’s now warm enough here in my area that yesterday everytime I stepped outside I was dodging a ton of insects: various paper wasps during the day, and some species of scarabiform beetles during the night!
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Oh, and at my home it’s crane flies galore every time I open the front door (day or night).
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