Yeah, Gizmodo…kinda ripped off my blog post. But it’s all good. :-)
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In addition to posting (yes, absolutely add them), feel free to start IDing nestling Green Herons, if you can differentiate them from other Ardeidae nestlings.
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Several related posts that may be worth a look:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/old-observations-still-useful/20180
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/should-i-post-old-observations-where-i-vaguely-know-the-location/25126
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/adding-old-observations-from-other-sources-an-ideal-winter-activity/20527
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Fortunately, I was using a digital camera at the time so it won’t be too hard…
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Old data is useful for people creating checklists of an area. This could be like “Birds of Ontario”, “Vascular Plants of North Bay and Area”, “Fungi of Algonquin Provincial Park” etc. Even really old data can be useful. Although in most checklists there is usually a cut off date. Most local bird checklists for USA and Canada, for example, will not include the extinct Passenger Pigeon, as there are very few people still alive who have seen one alive.
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But do you have a clear memory of the location? Because when I use the satellite view on Google Maps, I can usually figure out pretty precisely where I was years ago based on my mental picture of the place.
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As I said elsewhere on the forum, if your photos are all from the 21st century, sorry, they’re not old.
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Sometimes I can reconstruct the location but not always, or imprecisely. 40 yrs is a long time for remembering such things.
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I think that data of any age is useful, if the details are available. Edit 2: Looking at old herbarium data the locations are often way out, some are just descriptions like “20 km south of such and such town”. Are these data useful? I think so
I’ve uploaded photos that are approx. 20 years old. For most of these I still have my written journals so I know the location. For others I have GPS track logs. Some I can’t upload because for whatever reason I didn’t write in my journal that day and/or didn’t have my GPS. So I don’t upload those. But for some that are missing my notes/GPS position I can work out where I was because I know generally where I’ve seen species, and if I have taken a photo with a landmark I can recognise in it (e.g. a cliff or mountain top; Edit: I’ve only done this a few times, but for example if I take a photo of a plant and then 1 minute later take a photo of Uluru I’ll know generally where I was) and that photo was taken within, say, a minute of when I took the organism photo I can be pretty confident of where I was (I can’t walk very far in a minute or two). So, I’ll upload those with a large circle of uncertainty. Some of my old photos from Papua New Guinea are the only records on iNat. Surely that’s useful even if the location is 500 metres out (although I think they’re more like 50 m out)
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That’s how my observations at Chimney Rock, Nebraska got onto iNat. I was only there once, for no more than an hour, on a road trip, but since I wrote that location on the back of the print, that means the picture had to have been taken somewhere along that loop trail. If you look for Chimney Rock on Google Maps, you’ll see that it isn’t an extensive area.
Old data can be useful, too, in tracking where a species used to occur. The dusky seaside sparrow was long extinct by the time iNat came along, but there are observations of it thanks to people’s archived photos. It sure is strange to see an observation from 1978; I mean, there wasn’t really an internet in 1978.
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I’m a Museum curator so my opinion about old data is quite high! We love and thrive on old data. Indeed, in the context of our (bird) collection, everything not this month is now old. 4 years is like “last month”…
And I fear Green Heron will be a new “watch out” bird in the near future due to perceived declines and habitat loss. This species does not seem to be on many “conservation radars” yet but some of us feel that day is quickly approaching.
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I didn’t realize that Green Heron were declining although I’m well aware of habitat loss (we recently bought a cutover swamp and are trying to restore it to help some of that habitat loss–in fact my husband keeps bugging me to find some kind of endangered species so we can qualify to get assistance in the restoration work but that’s another story…)
I’ve been uploading the observation information as well as adding journal entries about my observations. So I hope it will be of assistance to someone…
Thank you all the the replies and encouragement however. It really helped me.
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Absolutely think you SHOULD Post! Longer term Observations of Species is valuable! Great opportunity you had to see Green Herons nest!!!
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My dad needed to travel for his job across most of Kansas and kept bird lists for each county along the way starting about 1960. When the Breeding Bird Atlas was created, many years later, he had those lists to submit. Many of the counties never had bird records until then. Old data is new to someone and often has great value. I have submitted some from 2007 to iNat.
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that information is always very valuable, no matter what year it is, comparisons can be made with someone else who is studying them right now in any other place, in addition to being able to share them with someone who could help them publish them in an article scientific.
I hope someone is interested good luck
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Definitely upload them! Old data is just as useful as new data, if not more. That sort of thing isn’t “clogging” at all but in line with the purpose of iNat (one of them anyway).
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