gcwarbler's Journal

Mary Kay and I were recently driving back from a family reunion in North Carolina towards home in Texas. I was navigating through lightly-traveled back roads to get across the South. Almost by accident, we stumbled upon Natural Bridge Park, near Natural Bridge, Alabama, a privately owned 140-acre nature preserve in western Winston County along US 278. We took a short two-mile hike in the canyon. It turned out to be one of the loveliest places we had seen in our travels through ten southern states.

The rugged canyon at Natural Bridge harbors some fabulous rock formations, cliffs, and shelter caves, the most iconic being the namesake feature, the "longest natural bridge east of the Mississippi". It is truly spectacular.

The canyon is clothed with old-growth beech-magnolia-oak-pine-hemlock forest and harbors many regional rarities. The proprietors, Donnie and Naomi Lowman, are very interested in documenting the biodiversity in the park and recently (5-7 April 2024) hosted an iNat bioblitz at the site. My contribution on our short visit in early July offers only a very small set of observations but those included a number of new-to-me plant species. I can see from the array of species documented thus far on iNaturalist that there is a great deal more to discover at this site. I highly recommend a stopover at this site for anyone traveling through the region. Admission is $10/adult. Here are links to more information about the site:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Bridge_Park
https://www.northalabama.org/listing/natural-bridge-park/269/

Whew! I just finished a long-overdue task. From my interest in aquatic Crambid moths, I had wanted to review all available sightings of the genus Petrophila on iNaturalist. Over the past two days, using the Identify pages, I went through all of the remaining "Needs ID" observations. I can't identify many of the Central or South American species because there are just too many Neotropical species which I'm not familiar with. Those aside, I have now examined a little over 9,200 (86%) of the 10,700 Petrophila observations from the U.S. and Canada. I estimate that about 95 to 97% of them allowed a species level ID. (Currently 6.3% of all U.S. and Canadian observations sit at genus level but some of those will get to species when another community ID is added.)

Selfishly, this kind of effort has a number of benefits. It allows me (a) to cement in my mind not only the known diagnostic features of each of the several Petrophila species (see an array of the most common species, below), but also (b) to benefit from examining the variation available in patterns (and photographs) across the entire range of each species. Repetition is key in such a situation to gain some confidence in IDing, but it brings with it the chance for over-confidence. So I hope that only a modest number of my "improving" IDs will ever need to be changed or reversed.

Before I delve more deeply into the Petrophila moths of Central and South America, I hope to divert my attention to another favorite genus of mine, the Cisthene lichen moths, and review all the Needs ID observations for North America.

Now, everybody STOP observing Petrophila moths so I can catch my breath and turn my attention to other tasks! ;-)

Jalisco Petrophila (@jcochran706) | Canadian Petrophila (@smithjg1954) | Two-banded Petrophila (@jcochran706)

Feather-edged Petrophila (@gcwarbler) | Confusing Petrophila (@ouzel) | Capps' Petrophila (@gcwarbler)

Ozark Petrophila (@gzerbe57) | Kearfott's Petrophila (@egordon88) | Heppner's Petrophila (@ptexis)

Devil's River Petrophila (@ptexis) | Santa Fe Petrophila (@smithsqrd) | Spring Petrophila (@gaudettelaura)

I'm just discovering this! How come it took me so long??? (I hear Millennials and Gen X/Y/Z's groaning...)

Many, many times per day, I search for a particular taxon, species, genus, etc., either among my own observations or elsewhere on various iNat pages. In some settings (when?), I need to be pretty exact, avoiding typos, to get the correct species or group. But I've just learned that at least on the Explore page and the Suggest an Identification tab on observations, some creative, short abbreviations may get you to a desired species name pretty quickly. Below are some examples I've used recently. Some variations are really useful because the name is relatively unique; others may bring up a short list of matches from which you can select your target. Some just flop. It's all an experiment for me right now.

"st dai" brings Straggler Daisy to the top of a list.

"pet can" gets Canadian Petrophila (Petrophila canadensis) as 3rd choice, while
"pet canad" gets it to the top of the list.
"can pet" gets me Canadian Petrophila as the 2nd suggestion on the list, while
"cana pet" gets it to the top of the list.

"fea e" gets the Feather-edged Petrophila as 3rd choice, whereas
"fea ed" gets Feather-edged Petrophila uniquely.
"fulical" gets me Feather-edged Petrophila (Petrophila fulicalis) as 2nd choice.

"cis ten" brings Thin-banded Lichen Moth (Cisthene tenuifascia) to the top of a list, as does "thi lic"

Birds in North America have long had the advantage of being known by standardized 4-letter codes which are recognized in iNat's search boxes, but the irregular ones sometimes trip me up. For instance, while "CACW" gets you right to Cactus Wren, that irregular abbreviation (not "CAWR") may slip my mind. Happily, "cac wr" brings Cactus Wren to the top of the list, as does "cam bru" (for Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus, which is always fresh on my mind).

Experiment with your most frequent taxon searches and see how many keystrokes you can save!