The recent Great Southern Bioblitz weekend motivated quite a few of our members to become involved and has seen a greater use of iNaturalist. It is one online place to explore and share our observations from the natural world.
Our club has provided an online training session, some guiding notes and followup question and answer sessions and now many members are more confident about loading photos.
It is an interesting way to keep track of sightings and source identification for harder to name species. To reach ‘research grade’ more than one person needs to agree with an identification. One of the best aspects is that the records help scientists and resource managers understand when and where organisms occur.
Our administrator has recently added a new series of projects to help us track species observed in some of the more common places we visit, such as Creswick Regional Park, Woowookarung Regional Park and Lake Burrumbeet.
Records may be added via the phone app or from the computer. Some species are really hard to identify from photos and it may come down to the hairs on a stem, shape of a petal or the length of an antenna! So remember to take several photos and make sure you get ones of the main features and from a few different angles.
