Brief update and some thoughts on IDing

A quick belated update on some home observations. Mama wasp hasn't been around lately, but nest has several capped cells. Now I'm waiting to see if the Carolina Wrens find them. 😮 (See previous post.) Also, I just missed getting a hummingbird a few days ago; iNaturalist was both the reason for the sighting and the reason I didn't get the observation. I'd been trying to get a pic of a spinybacked orbweaver who had built a web way above the entryway. The phone camera had trouble locking onto it, and the sky behind it played hell with the lighting, so I finally dragged a stepchair out and climbed up to see if I could get a better angle for a decent picture. After several tries, I did manage to get it. I climbed down and while I was entering data for spinyback orbweaver, I heard this very loud buzzing sound. I looked up & was eye to eye with hummingbird! Tried desperately to back out of app to get to camera but hummingbird was gone before I could get to camera app! (Yes, I can take pics within the app, but the problem was that I tried to back out of a partial unsaved observation of the spinyback, which the app wouldn't let me do without either saving or discarding.) I stood perfecly still for a while, but the hummingbird didn't come back, though I got another spider while waiting. 😁 A twitchy little thing that blended very well with the brickwork. I wouldn't have seen it at all if it hadn't moved, or hadn't moved so fast. (A jumping spider species, I think. Waiting on ID confirmation.)

Actually I'm waiting on a lot of ID confirmations. iNaturalist has been so far as unhelpful in IDing things as it's been helpful. Right now I've got more without confirmed ID than I do with ID, including a few observations in which I couldn't even hazard a guess about what I was looking at. I would probably do better if I specialized in particular taxa; then eventually I'd end up with some connections to people who also specialize in the same things, and so get more confirmed IDs, learn things, and become a better observer and IDer myself. But I'm interested in everything to some extent. OK, maybe not everything, but I am curious about things I see in the natural world. I want to know what I'm seeing so I can find out more. I do know enough plants, both native and garden, that I can contribute an ID to some of them. I make a point to periodically click Explore for my location (which is Harris County, TX for most observations) and look over the photos for any not marked RG (Research Grade) to see if I can contribute anything. Sometimes for unknown I can contribute a phylla or family or genus, leaving a more precise ID for someone more knowledgeable, but at the same time being of some help to my fellow users. I'm surprised at how many really common plants are posted with no ID, but no one knows everything; a birder may be great with birds and trees, but not with spider ID. A pollinator specialist might not know the names of birds that aren't pollinators. Every ID represents a bit of knowledge shared. Since the web of life on this planet is complex, filling in the pieces--all the little pieces--can be very important to the big picture.

הועלה ב-אפריל 23, 2018 04:27 אחה"צ על ידי