Winter Activities on iNaturalistUK

Ideas to get you through the winter!

As the nights draw in there may be less opportunity for some of us to go out recording. This can be a great opportunity to review the sightings you have made throughout the past year and plan for the year ahead.

Here are some ideas

Improve your knowledge of how iNaturalistUK works

The iNaturalist Tutorials section is full of useful advice such as how to Use the Search URL's or photographing tips for optimum ID's to helpful tips for beginners. The tutorials are created by iNaturalist staff as well as the community. So if you have any useful tips / advice to help others please add them to this resource. These are in addition to the general Help guides on iNaturalistUK.

Update your observation licences

To ensure that the UK recording community can make the best use of your records you may want to change the licence you have assigned to your observations. You can read more about licences on this blog post, Licensed to Share!  You can edit licences for all observations at once or change one by one.

Take the time to review your observations

Have you been recording for a while and built up your species knowledge? Why not go back and look at your earlier observations that you weren't able to identify at first review. Can you  identify them now. If some are not yet at research grade can you add an identification? Are some tagged as private or obscured? Could you now change these to open? Read more about geoprivacy.

Help identify those unknowns

Even if you are not a species expert help is still needed to categorise those observations that are appearing as unknown. This can be as simple as adding a genus eg plants or birds. If you can confirm an ID that is even better! The All Unknowns in the UK project is a good place to start or take a look at this tutorial - 'Useful Tasks for Non Experts'.

Access free online courses

There are lots of great online resources to help you learn more about species recording in the UK. These include

Entolive - The entoLIVE webinar series is an upcoming programme of virtual talks exploring the science of insects and other invertebrates. All events are free to attend and are suitable for adults of all abilities – a passion for invertebrates is all that’s required!

Species ID Courses - SEWBReC have collated a huge playlist of species ID courses presented by a range of organisations including the Royal Horticultural Society, Field Studies Council, Buglife, Plantlife as well as their own short guides.

iNaturalistUK User Group

Take a look at the presentations from the iNaturalist User Group. View the videos presentations as well as the powerpoint slides. Topics include setting up projects on iNaturalistUK to learning how to record bats.

These are just few suggestions so please do comment below if you have any other tips and ideas.

Posted on 30 November, 2022 12:46 by giselle_s