No Rest for the Weary
Today’s the start of the six-day upload and identification period for the City Nature Challenge, but at least you get to put your feet up for this! Here are some reminders for this process.
Step One
Upload all your own observations. Check your iNaturalist app and make sure all your observations uploaded properly. If you use a separate camera, get all those observations uploaded. Remember you can make Casual observations as long as they have a date and place, so if you didn’t get a chance to make an observation for that moose you saw from Rt. 2 when there was no place to stop, now’s the time.
Step Two
Make sure all of your own observations have an initial identification. Sometimes with the iNat app, the automatic uploading glitches a bit and doesn’t translate the ID you gave into the official ID in the iNat observation. Here’s a URL to see if any of your Needs ID or Casual observations are Unknowns and missing an ID entirely; just substitute your username for Lynn Harper’s at the end of this URL: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=unknown&order=asc&identified=false&project_id=154296&user_id=lynnharper
(And that’s how Lynn discovered three of her Casual observations from last year were missing an ID. Oopsie.)
Step Three
Refine your own observations. Maybe you only had time to identify something as a salamander during the CNC itself; now’s your time to pull out your field guides and see what iNaturalist’s computer vision suggests. And please check your notifications in iNaturalist to see if other people have confirmed your ID or made comments.
Step Four – and this is the Important Step
Help others with their identifications. Nobody’s observations on iNaturalist get to Research Grade without at least one other person agreeing with an ID, and you can be that other person. What – you say you aren’t an expert? That’s fine; nobody is an expert in every single taxonomic group, just do what you can. Can you tell if something is a Plant or an Animal or a Fungus? Then add those IDs to Unknowns with this link. You say you’re pretty good with moths and butterflies; here’s a link for you. You love wildflowers? Here’s a link to dicots. And so on. Feel free to ask us questions about this process (and see yesterday’s journal post for a list of today’s identification workshops).
Every identification you add helps, seriously. If you run out of observations in the Western Mass City Nature Challenge, your help will be just as welcome in the Boston CNC or the Burlington, VT, CNC or even globally. And thank you!
--Lynn Harper and Melanie Radik, co-organizers
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