What if I didn't get a picture?

This question came up yesterday: Do I need need a photo or sound file to post an observation? What if I saw a bird and it got away before I could take a picture?

You can still create an observation on iNaturalist with the time, place, and species without media (photo or sound) attached to keep a record of what you saw. However, like observations of captive/cultivated organisms these will be considered 'casual' and not count towards your BioBlitz stats.

To make observations research grade, others would need to be able to confirm your sighting based on evidence provided. If you don't have a photo, you can get creative: Make a sketch of what you saw and post a picture of that in place of a photo, along with a detailed description. For ideas how to do this and still make it count, check out some of the research grade observations based on drawings that others have posted on iNaturalist. These were posted to the Nature Drawing and Journaling Project , which is a good place to connect with other iNaturalist users who use a sketch book rather than a camera to record observations.

Progress update:
We're at over 1,500 observations now, covering a total of 428 species identified with 183 of those already having been confirmed to research grade. A shout-out and big Thank you! to our top identifiers tsn, rivermont, and maxbird1 who are helping out by adding IDs for others! Our top two species observed remain the same as yesterday, with Christmas fern, white pine, and English ivy rounding out the top five. Currently the top three observers with the most species are leighalobelia, dendro-julia, and brynnaselah.

Friday activities:
Biology department folks are planning a few group activities for Friday, including a trip to the ASU Farm in the morning, aquatic sampling along the New River at the Greenway and a field trip to the Gilley Research Station in the afternoon. Stay tuned for more updates on these!

Please make sure to mark stuff that was planted as captive/cultivated. We're seeing a lot of plants being posted from around campus, some of which were clearly put there by humans (e.g. street trees, shrubs in front of buildings, flowers and other landscape plantings). It's fine to add these to iNaturalist and they can be useful to document what is still blooming, for example. However, they should be marked "not wild" so they don't mess up species range maps for those using iNaturalist data for research projects. If it looks planted (e.g. in a mulched area, signs of care such as pruning or staking), please remember to check the "captive/cultivated" box when you upload these. Please note that only wild organisms will count towards the BioBlitz stats, so also check out those plants for anything wild on or around them: Mosses and lichens on the bark of trees, for example, weeds growing between the flowers, or insects visiting them would all be wild observations that count.

It's great to see so many folks getting involved and having fun with this!

Posted on October 26, 2022 11:19 AM by annkatrinrose