Diario de levinletlive

I can't believe it... It's done. I tagged everything. Every single observation I've made. All 1,472 of them. All 50 pages of them. It took me 2 months to do it, but I have officially tagged every single observation I've ever made with information on the species/subgenus/genus/tribe/order/etc, the common names, any taxon swaps and inactive names, whether it's unidentified or Research Grade or casual, approximately where it was located, etc.

I had a few goals in mind doing this project. First, I was having a lot of trouble searching for specific species I couldn't remember the names for. I could only remember a specific thing, like where I found them, what plant they were on, or what color they were. I wanted to make it very simple for me to search for an item based on the limited number of things I might remember about it.

Second, I wasn't getting a lot of help identifying some species, and I figured that might be a visibility issue. I made sure to update and tag addresses and pertinent info about each species so that people following them would see what I uploaded, and I saw results from that almost immediately. Dozens of my observations got attention very shortly after being tagged.

Finally, I wanted to sift through and get rid of duplicate and "junk" observations. I have files saved to my camera, phone, and two computers, as well as multiple Google Drive accounts, so there is always some overlap. Plus, I made some mistakes earlier in my hobby as a naturalist and uploaded some images that were just useless and could not be identified to any extent. I chucked those out. I've learned that not everything I take a picture of has to be an observation, while any species I intend to submit as an observation should be thoroughly recorded.

In other news, I sent my camera out for cleaning because somehow, dozens of little black fibers and bits made their way into the viewfinder. That was on Monday, and the camera shop told me it's about a 6-week turnaround for that service because they have to send it to Nikon to get it done. It's in the wind now, but I've been very antsy without it. I considered saying screw it, and upgrading to the D800 right now, but the cheapest body I could find was $800 before tax and because of that, I would have had to do a payment plan that would have had me paying almost $100/month. I opted to send my camera to be cleaned instead, assuming that would be cheaper, buuuuuuut...

Today I was sitting outside on the asphalt in the back of the parking lot. I like to sit there because there are some agapanthas and ivy and there are a lot of neat bugs and birds that I can watch. I watched a mockingbird chase a crow, and wished I'd been able to record it. They passed me twice. Then, what finally broke me, was what I saw when I zoned out staring at the ground. Just the teeniest bit of movement, and a red dot, but too big to be a spider mite, and I knew it was a jumping spider. It was Attinella dorsata, which I just discovered the existence of earlier last month. But near it on the asphalt were two even teenier ones, smaller than an ant, smaller even than a gnat. They hopped on and off of my fingers and I couldn't stop thinking about how badly I wanted to record it, and that basically broke me. I went back to my office and hopped on eBay and found the D800 plus the battery and charger for just under $800 with taxes and shipping included. I ended up maxing out a credit card to do it, but I figured that was better than a payment plan because I could pay off the card at a lower rate and at my own pace.

I still have to wait until next Friday to get it, but at least now I have something to look forward to, and I'm not so stressed about not knowing where my old camera is. When it finally gets back to me I'll probably just sell it with its accessories to recoup some of the money I spent on the new one. It was in pretty good condition, and I know a couple of people who might buy it off me. The D800 takes photos at 36.3 megapixels, which is just, so many more megapixels than any camera I've ever owned, so I can't wait to experiment with that. Next week is going to feel terribly long.

In the meantime, I still have a few more observations to upload before I run out of material and I can take it easy and try my hand at ID'ing other folks' stuff for a change. I'm getting more confident with certain species , so I'd like to contribute back where I can, and now is the perfect time to do that.

Wow! It's already been over a year since I started my iNat account and began uploading my photography, and I've already learned so much thanks to the community here. It's been very eye-opening to be able to identify the subjects of my photos and learn about their history, habits, and place in our ecosystem. I feel like I've gotten over my fear of most insects and spiders, and critters that I would have once shuddered to look at I now handle with gentle awe. I'm really a bug guy now, but I'm still learning.

Mainly, I'm learning about the way this site, and particularly the process of identification, works. I could just kick myself in the past for not taking better notes on my subjects and taking supplementary pictures to go with my "money" shots, because I've learned that there are many things which cannot be identified just by their most beautiful elements. The leaves, stems, and branches of plants are integral to their identification, and most spiders need a clear shot of both face and back to be accurately ID'd. Even still, there are some species I can never hope to get an accurate ID for because their determining criteria require the use of a microscope.

In the past, I relied almost exclusively on Google Images reverse image search to identify my subjects. iNat's identification algorithm is so much more helpful. I still sometimes need to refer to Google when the picture isn't quite clear enough for iNat's algorithm to catch, but using this site has made an enormous dent in the amount of time I used to spend trying to figure out what I took a picture of. Whether it's common garden plants or wild herbs, I can never go on a walk anymore without noticing and naming everything I pass by. It's added so much more dimension and satisfaction to my photography hobby.

That said, iNat's algorithm, as I'm finding out, is far from perfect and so am I. I have struggled with certain subjects that I don't have enough information to get an accurate and refined ID for, and I've been guilty of overusing iNat's "Compare" feature, as well referencing other observations on iNat in my local area. I've recently figured out why that's not a good idea, and it's because there are obviously many more species in the area than people near me have identified. If you think about it, as I have only recently, most of the people you know are not on iNat. Most of the people on iNat are probably just hobbyists like me, and like me, they probably mostly lack the equipment and knowledge necessary to identify the myriad species around here. What that means is that many species which occur in a given location just go undocumented, with very few or no observations of them listed on the site.

The perfectionist in me wants to get exact IDs on my subjects, but that isn't always possible and it's really not necessary. If a client of mine likes a picture I took of a jumping spider, they're not going to care if I tell them it's a Paradise Spider or if I tell them it's Habronattus pyrrithrix.

I've gotten much better at taking supplemental photos as I've learned what is necessary to ID certain subjects. I take pictures of flowers, but also leaves--front and back--berries (if they're present), branches/stems, and sometimes seeds if they're around. I've also learned how to identify land that is cultivated from land that is not; for instance, although there are many creeks and regional parks around me, many of these areas are bordered by or interspersed with cultivates zones. This means that some subjects that I previously considered "wild" (trees, mostly) were actually planted intentionally and just happened to be in close proximity to the wild areas. This is very common where I live. It is often hard to tell where the cultivated land ends and the "wilderness" begins. It mostly happens through memorization. Most cultivated plants can't thrive without cultivation, so you know they didn't just grow there by themselves. Crape-myrtle trees don't grow on Mount Diablo, they're planted in parks by cities. Eucalyptus trees, by contrast, can be cultivated, but they also have an uncanny knack for self-propagation, so rarely you'll find them outside of the typical cultivation areas. And some native trees, like California redwoods, occur often in the wild, but are also very intentionally planted in gardens and parks.

I've gotten schooled on here a few times (as was bound to happen, I have submitted over a thousand observations since I first began) and most of the corrections I have gotten have been pretty polite. I have come across people who were somewhat passive-aggressive, but nobody who was outright rude, which is a nice change from most internet communities. I get the sense that there are a lot of scientists on this site that are very tired of having to explain things to newcomers and artists like myself, and I sympathize with that. I'm sure it's frustrating.

I wish that some of these lessons had been accounted for in the site introduction. I don't know for sure if that would have corrected my behavior sooner, but it might have been easier for the people correcting me to link me to a page of common mistakes or even a FAQ page on the etiquette of ID than having to put in the labor of explaining to me why I can't narrow down this flower's ID anymore than a suborder. I imagine as a scientist using this site, you probably end up having the same conversation over and over with dozens of photographers who are driven by the same neurotic desire for perfection as me, while not taking the necessary pictures/providing the right information to make a perfect determination where possible, and it's got to be annoying to try to break through their ignorance every time. I don't imagine that everybody is as gracious as me when being corrected.

Anyhow, I need to get back to work at my day job so I'm going to keep taking pictures and learning and hopefully someday I can join the ranks of the scientists in correcting other people like me. I got my driver's license on Tuesday despite being nearly 30 years old, so I'm going to be going out further and further from my base in west Contra Costa County soon. Happy belated New Year everybody, and happy iNativersary to me.

I've only been doing photography since 2017, but I have so many pictures and no effective way to catalog to them or identify the subjects in all of them. This is a project going hand-in-hand with a photo gallery I'm trying to develop, but I only want to include images that have very positive IDs. I see something new pretty much every time I leave my home, so hopefully others will find my uploads helpful too.