My love for iNat

I love this site, app, tool, thing called iNaturalist. Okay I cannot compete with the love that my friend Sam Kieschnick among others has for it. But I really do.
I love the ability to record and track my observations. I love the ability to learn about things that I had no idea about before. I love learning more about something I thought I knew a little about. I particularly love being able to find out where I can go to track down something that has recently come to my attention. I love the community of nature nerds that it brings together. Sam calls it facebook for nature people.
I even love the competition. As an example there are two Odonates that I learned about a couple months ago that I really wanted to see for myself. I have been trying to figure out where to search and could i find time to drive to where they would be. They are not found, at least regularly in the DFW area, have to go to east TX. So a few weeks ago on my dashboard I see that Sam has made a trip to a WMA and has photos of both of them. This simply wont do. He wasn't even at the presentation where I heard about them.
I am now not only jealous but competitiveness sets in that I have got to be able to say I saw them too. Now I will never even try to compete with Sam on plants. But, dragonflies! I got into them a year before he did. The gauntlet has been thrown down.
So last Friday finally able to get away a friend and i headed to Gus Engeling WMA. Got one of the two for sure and I am certain i saw the other though I didn't get a photo to be able to confirm. And Sam always says if you don't have a photo it doesn't count on iNat. LOL.
Oh well I saw a baby alligator and he didn't.

Posted on Αύγουστος 11, 2015 1124 ΜΜ by brentano brentano

Σχόλια

Haha! ;) I agree -- I am passionately obsessed with this iNat culture. :) I think the most fitting word for iNaturalist is "community." It's really a community of interested folks. And that community is actively adding data for the global biodiversity of all organisms.

I've found that it's fun to compete with myself too -- like I'll intentionally go out to look for things I haven't seen before (whilst also observing the things I see all the time -- I think that's super important to do too). And, as I observe them, I set the challenge to myself to ID them, or at least get a close as I can to an ID. Lots of times, I set it up as 'ID please' to remind myself to go back and look at them later.

I am indeed envious of your gator observation... ;)

Oh! I'm presenting on iNat at the CTMN meeting in September. I'll mention you -- you better be there!

Αναρτήθηκε από sambiology πάνω από 8 χρόνια πριν

I saw a baby gator today!! I think it was loitering with intent! Right next to the canoe launch area at the FW Nature Center!

Αναρτήθηκε από andyk πάνω από 8 χρόνια πριν

It's interesting that you mention competitiveness. Certainly this seems like the kind of friendly competition that we want to encourage :-)

Αναρτήθηκε από carrieseltzer πάνω από 8 χρόνια πριν

Loved reading your post. I am new to iNaturalist and to the Master Naturalists. My sister and I do have a little bit of that competitive nature, but I like to say we are just encouraging the other...it's scouting on steroids! And we find it complements traipsing through the woods and other adventures in the wild. I've been blogging about adventures for a while (and I can be less precise in identification - frogfruit is sufficient on the blog, but I "dial in" on iNaturalist). iNaturalist makes me look harder and work a little harder. Take good care around those alligators.

Αναρτήθηκε από alflinn329 πάνω από 6 χρόνια πριν

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