Improving my iNaturalist Identifications (1 Viewer)

[Steve Babbs]

I can't say for sure but I get the impression that inaturalist is not used a lot for birds. It can be a useful tool for other groups but I suspect the users who help with ID are much more have a good knowledge of the wildlife of Europe, North America, Australia and the NZ than the Neotropics.

 

[Butty]

I suspect that, at present, people here do not have a clear idea of what you are trying ultimately to achieve. If you would like to post some of your photos with problematic IDs in BF's 'Bird Identification Q&A' forum, it would help us to understand the type of specific ID problems you wish to be resolved and thus better enable us to give you general advice on how to reach your ultimate goal?

 

[pbjosh]

I suspect that, at present, people here do not have a clear idea of what you are trying ultimately to achieve. If you would like to post some of your photos with problematic IDs in BF's 'Bird Identification Q&A' forum, it would help us to understand the type of specific ID problems you wish to be resolved and thus better enable us to give you general advice on how to reach your ultimate goal?

I'm also still not clear what they're trying to achieve. As I understand it, they want to post what are already identified birds to iNaturalist and then be assured that other people will come along and confirm the ID's and/or take note of their observations. At least that's my best guess.

 

[Jim M.]

I'm not an iNaturalist user, as I found the site a bit clunky and I didn't find that it offered me anything novel compared to eBird and/or iGoTerra.

FYI: I have never used Igoterra but know it is a pay site; iNaturalist is free and covers all taxa of living things. So if you are submitting more than bird observations, it offers a distinct advantage among the three sites mentioned. Very easy to use imo for submitting photo IDs--clunky if you don't have photos of everything--it's focus is photo IDs.

 

[Elkhornsun]

The Merlin app from Cornell Lab has a Sound ID feature that works exceptionally well. I use to get a quick survey of all the birds in an area and then can start to look for them. Great for more obscure visitors. Also great for identification of owls at night.

 

[WPASA]

Yes, amateur naturalists, that's exactly who are you gonna get to ID on iNat. That's literally the point of the website. I have deleted the rest of the quote because it's frankly offensive and you should slap yourself on the face for saying that. Lseuza in particular has alerted me to ID errors many times, hr definitely doesn't "mindlessly sweep".

Dude, you can leave.

Hundreds of undergraduate programs mandate their students complete and reference hundreds of observations.

Sorry I hurt your feelings and . I don't value your opinions on this topic or anything else whatsoever.

As per harassment laws in the US and also Ecuador, I am telling you right now, your contributions to this post are hurtful, aggressive violent, I do not want you to contribute or communicate with me socially again. Continuing to do so after this constitutes harassment.

This is a written warning.

 

[WPASA]

I just want local individuals to have their observations reviewed by actual Ecuadorians.

A portion of my team has a background in provincial archeology and cultural heritage management from multiple research universities in the United States.

Their wealth of experience has taught us on multiple occasions, the difficulties of convincing people like farmers, landowners and locals to trust us enough to allow us even access to their lands for simple surveying.

Upon teaching local individuals to value their cultural heritage, and showing them the benefits of preserving their history. For example: in the Balkans, after one field season, we found the locals not only welcomed us with open arms, we also noticed that upon teaching the community to value the earth under their lands, incidents of looting became nearly nonexistent. This was extremely powerful in one of the most remote and isolated places in the Balkans, in a culture so conservative blood feuds are still a regular occurrence.

We are trying to develop the same level of respect, consciousness and pride for the megadiversity (the true wealth of this land) amongst the communities of rural Ecuador.

I'm sorry if this bothers any of you, but in a place subjected to arbitrary deforestation for livestock, illegal logging, illegal mining, poaching for bushmeat and the exotic pet trade, in addition to the virtual theft of comuna lands, in addition to the literal rape of our amazon in the name of petrol extraction, I think it's extremely rude to tell our students, locals and elders that they need to consistently rely on individuals of privilege in Brasil and Argentina, whom have no actual collegiate credentials, peer reviewed journals, or even holding a position in any conservation or wildlife management groups whatsoever.

We are literally on the ground telling farmers to stop shooting endangered Andean Condors because an individual bird stole a chicken and scared a few sheep away from a granja.. we are here negotiating with comunas and provinces to install traffic lights to prevent more Guatusas from being hit by trucks at night on the coast.

We are risking our lives and the lives of our families to preserve the natural wealth that exists in these communities.

I don't know how serious member of BirdForum are about conservation, I haven't researched this website that thoroughly, so I wont generalize.

I've been on enough safaris and birding trips with rich dentistas to know not everyone who is interested photographing wildlife, actually cares about the well-being and preservation of the animals they are witnessing (ask me about Galapagos sometime!)

it's no disrespect, but I think I may be in the completely wrong place.

 

[Butty]

I think I may be in the completely wrong place.

👍🏻

 

[WPASA]

👍🏻

Thank you for this insight into your community. We will be discussing this community, including responses to this post, as well as other online resources including ebird and iNat at our national conference next month.

 

[opisska]

Dude, you can leave.

Hundreds of undergraduate programs mandate their students complete and reference hundreds of observations.

Sorry I hurt your feelings and . I don't value your opinions on this topic or anything else whatsoever.

As per harassment laws in the US and also Ecuador, I am telling you right now, your contributions to this post are hurtful, aggressive violent, I do not want you to contribute or communicate with me socially again. Continuing to do so after this constitutes harassment.

This is a written warning.

I don't care about your delusional legalese. If you are posting offensive nonsense, I am gonna call you up on that.

 

[Mono]

I am struggling to see how this descended into such a slanging match.

To @WPASA what I think you want is for local people to develop an appreciation of nature as a tool for conservation, part of that process is for them to have the ID of their sightings verified. If iNat is not doing that for you then use a different platform or encourage Ecuadorian experts to join iNat. Also cut down on the pointless and lengthy rants about archeology in the Balkans and nationalistic South American politics. If you had been clear about aims then a lot of the ensuing questioning and the arguments about it would have been avoided.

To everyone else, just keep it mellow.

 

[THE_FERN]

Just to say I've often wondered if the real key into natural history for latinolandia is to persuade people to take butterfly photos. It's just about possible with the phones everyone has and doesn't require binoculars.

So if valuing natural heritage is the aim, give it a go!

...I've never seen anyone pushing this... Course would help if there were some more resources on butterflies out there. But there's still mariposas de Los Andes I think.

(Birds are a bugger, plants are often boring, you never see mammals and other insects are impossible to id)