shxx60's Journal

I came to iNaturalist because I wanted help identifying wildflowers. My wife uses an app on her phone that provides an identification of photographs, but I saw that iNat came highly recommended, so I decided to try it out.

As an aside, while I am a late-adopter of apps and such things, I have been an avid observer of plants and animals for most of my life, and honed those skills as a college student.

So after about a year on iNaturalist I thought I would reflect on the experience.

1. iNat accelerates learning. In the old days I would observe wildflowers in the backcountry, take mental notes, and come home to look them up in my wildflower books. Later I would take photos once smart phones came along, which was more effective than my memory. The learning process is much faster with iNaturalist, as the sum of the identification power of the iNat algorithm and the expertise of reviewers exceeds what I could get from my books. As a retired university professor and academic leader I know the value of a tool that improves learning outcomes.
2. iNat has improved my smart phone photography skills. Taking multiple photographs clearly showing plant morphology increases the likelihood of the observation getting reviewed. I figured out how to get clear close-ups too.
3. The volunteering aspect of identifying observations made by others on iNat is fun. This aspect of iNat combines the joy of making your own observation with helping others. I have identified something like 5 times as many plants and animals as I have observed myself. By reviewing a given taxon over time it is fun to see wildflower emergence progress northwards or upwards with the season. In addition to helping people you see some great photos and interesting locations.
4. I don't see the point of the competitive aspect. I know that some folks may enjoy rankings of who observes or identifies the most, or besting others in identification, perhaps like a multi-player online game where one progresses through levels. It is useful to know competent identifiers of a taxon when one is seeking a review of an observation, but I don't know that someone with 150,000 identifications or observations is 10x or 100x better than someone with 15,000 or 1,500.
5. Getting observations reviewed can be great, and can also be a drag. Its a nice feeling to see folks review your observations unsolicited. It is remarkable how often observations don't get a review. I have found the "@personxyz" tagging to be a nearly useless exercise. Messaging "top reviewers" at times feels like begging. Then you realize maybe you are too attached to the whole process and need to let go for a while. Maybe drop iNat and just get one of those plant ID apps and avoid dealing with people. But if you found a relatively rare taxon, then you see the value of "research grade" in terms of getting the observation into a spatial botanical or zoological database. This part of iNat reminds me of the lottery aspect of scholarly journal peer review, something I have a lot of experience with on both sides. But with iNat you can also just be ignored. Kind of like High School.
6. The process of identifying an observation you are uploading on a phone app is tough when you have older eyes. You upload photos from your phone ('cause that's the tool you used to take the photos in the first place), then you use the app to suggest identifications, and then you compare and decide. On a phone, this last step involves comparing a tiny thumbnail of your observation with the candidate identities. That doesn't work with my antique eyes, and you cannot enlarge your photos at this stage on iNat's app. So then I go back and open my photo gallery again to get a larger view of the observation, and go back to iNat, only to find that it has "updated its database" or some such, and I must start all over again re-uploading the photos. Meanwhile I forgot the key details of my observation and have to do it all over again. I find this makes initial identifications error-prone and a little frustrating.

All told, I would say that the pluses outweigh the minuses. I've met some good folks on iNat, but it takes a while. The process reminds me of trying to learn a new piece of software, combined with trying to meet people when you move to a new town.

On April 23 Mary and I took a nice hike up in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park. We had planned on just walking the Meadow Trail, but the meadow offered few wildflowers, so we turned left and went up the Vista Trail. It was like night and day, with a lot more wildflowers than down in the meadow. As we chugged uphill, we came to some steps. Mary was ahead, as I was lagging and taking flower photos per usual. Suddenly I saw her jump back towards me, and I saw a coiled rattlesnake quickly making an exit to the right. From my brief view I think it was a large, mature Crotalus oreganus ssp. oreganus with a faded color pattern. Anyways, Mary got quite the scare, as she came close to stepping on it. Thankfully the snake was chill about the whole thing, and just slithered into the brush.

And what did I see, right on that same step -- Fritillaria affinis, several lovely checker lilies. While I was not fast enough to get a photo of the rattler (and frankly, getting a photo was not a priority at the moment), I got the bonus of getting checker lily photos.

Mary the Brave continued up Vista with me, and we eventually took Lower Bald Mountain Trail back to the observatory area for a nice loop.

All in all lovely day with a bit of adrenalin, and thankfully no need for a helicopter trip to the hospital!

Above Humboldt Bay in Humboldt County, California, the first range of sizeable hills to the east forms a region called Kneeland. The lower 3/4 of these hills are dense redwood forest, while the ridge tops (2000 to 3000 feet elevation) are open prairies, oak savannahs, or oak woodlands. Kneeland Road offers reasonably fit road cyclists a vigorous and beautiful hill ride and a thrilling (brake-burning) descent. Beyond the redwood trees, it is fair to say that many travelers on this road are largely unaware of the great richness and diversity of flora through which this road travels. The wildflowers one can see on the climbing portion of this ride range from inhabitants of the wet redwood forest and riparian zones, up through Douglas-fir and oak woodlands into sun-bathed ridgetop prairies. Below I offer a sampling of wild flowers, flowering shrubs, and some critters I recorded in my cycling log between about 2009 and 2016, broken out by month. The listing is neither orderly nor comprehensive:

March: Crimson columbines, calypso (fairy slipper) orchids, pink oxalis, milkmaids, redwood violets, yerba de selva, white to deep maroon trilliums, large false Solomon's seal, fragrant fringecup, Oregon geranium, vanilla leaf (not blooming yet), inside-out flower (not blooming yet). Bonus: Chorus of frogs in vernal pools.

April: Calypso (fairy slipper) orchids, red clintonia, milkmaids, white to deep maroon trilliums, Pacific hounds tongue, delphiniums, Ithuriel's spear, broad leaf forget-me-nots, large false Solomon's seal, star Solomon's seal, California Indian pink, blue-eyed grass, Pacific star flower, pink redwood sorrel, yellow redwood violet, Siberian miner's lettuce, Bleeding hearts, false lily of the valley, Oregon geranium, Smith's fairy bells, cow parsnips.

May: Douglas iris, inside-out flower, purple lupine, Pacific starflower, star Solomon's seal, trillium, side-flowered mitrewort, milkmaids, blue delphinium, yerba de selva, Oregon geranium, Siberian miner's lettuce, Pacific rhododendron, Vanilla leaf (not blooming yet), Kellogg's tiger lily (not blooming yet), California golden poppy, firecracker flower, canyon delphinium (red larkspur), Ithuriel's spear, blue-eyed grass, common madia (tarweed), pink oxalis, blueblossom ceanothus, yerba de selva, large false Solomon's seal, orange bush monkeyflower, frosted Indian paintbrush. Bonus: Ruffed grouse.

June: Red clintonia, Douglas iris, inside-out flower, purple lupine, crimson columbine, delphinium, Pacific starflower, Woodland phlox, frosted paintbrush, orange bush monkeyflower, ocean spray, Kellogg's tiger lily, regular tiger lily, Humboldt's lily, Pacific waterleaf, sanicle, yerba de selva, Oregon geranium, Siberian miner's lettuce, Pacific rhododendron, yellowleaf iris, fragrant fringecup, fairy bells, yellow-orange California poppies, bleeding hearts, pink oxalis, blueblossom ceanothus, large false Solomon's seal, star Solomon's seal, vanilla leaf in bloom, Oregon geranium, daisies, purple lupine, vetches, daisies, other asters, purple owl's clover.

July: California Indian pink, tiger lily, Kellogg's tiger lily, Oregon geranium, crimson columbine, orange bush monkeyflower, daisies, purple lupines, vetches, sweet peas, purple owl's clover.

If you also like to ride bicycles and observe wildflowers and critters, and/or have some similar experiences to share, including good locations, then please do so in the comment section below:

This journal post is drawn from cycling log entries and recollections from 14 years ago, up in Humboldt County, California.

First let me note that for most of my life I have felt a strong connection to mountain lions (Puma concolor). Through many years as an avid hiker, backpacker, wilderness trip leader, trail runner, and later mountain biker, however, I never saw one. During this time I did encounter black bears, bobcats, herds of elk, rattlesnakes, mountain sheep, and tracks of grizzly bears (in my years living in Montana). This brief journal entry is about 2009, my personal year of the mountain lion.

Why mountain biking? In 2009 we had been living in Humboldt County, California for about 15 years, as I was a professor at what is now called Cal Poly Humboldt. Due to knee issues I was transitioning from a runner to a cyclist. The advantage of cycling in coastal Humboldt is that while running will rarely get you out of the seemingly ubiquitous coastal fog, on a bicycle you have the range to travel far enough inland to find blue sky and warmer temperatures. Moreover, I discovered that especially on a slow uphill grind you can see a lot more wild flowers along the margin of narrow back country roads than you can on a walk or run. Thus Humboldt's hills and backcountry roads were where you could find me, when I wasn't at home or the university. Here's the story:

22 August 2009, Arcata Community Forest: I set out to do multiple laps on my mountain bike, climbing from Arcata up to the top of the Arcata Community Forest (ACF), and then down again. This was a Saturday, and there was a cross-country running event also occurring in the ACF. From my house I had to transit through some of the course until I got onto trail 12, an unpaved forest road providing access to the top of the ACF. With all the activity on the running event course, it was great to be back in the quiet of the deep redwood forest, steadily climbing upwards, away from all the hubbub. Once you get near the top the terrain flattens a bit. As I was riding around a curve, still gently climbing, I saw in front of me a sizeable animal with a long tawny tail, loping along up the trail in front of me. Holy moly it was a mountain lion, at last, and only about 40 or 50 feet ahead of me! How incredibly wonderful! I guessed that the lion was also looking to get away from the busy running event. I stopped immediately, not wanting to close the distance between us or pressure the big cat in any way. I remember I looked down for maybe a second when I put my foot down, and when I looked up again, the mountain lion was gone! Ok, I thought, where did it go? Might it be tempted to circle behind me? Last thing I wanted was to tangle with a mountain lion -- both for my own sake, but also to keep this special animal safe from harm resulting from unfortunate contact with a human. So I turned my bike around and headed back down the hill, and that was that. What a great day!

10 October 2009, Butler Valley: I remember this was a beautiful autumn Saturday in Humboldt County. The Butler Valley Loop is a vigorous, mountainous ~ 50 mile backcountry road bike ride that follows the Mad River to Blue Lake, traverses the hills above the Mad River past the Korbel lumber mill, crosses the Mad River upstream near Butler Valley, and climbs 2000' to the Kneeland summit, ending with a long descent to Freshwater Creek and Humboldt Bay.

The story begins in Butler Valley. I was ascending Butler Valley Road near the Butler Valley ranch driveway, on a terrace above the Mad River, right before the big Kneeland climb begins, when I saw something in the meadow on the left. So I stopped and looked. It looked pretty much like a mountain lion sitting in the tall tawny grass of the meadow, maybe 150' or so away, but the grass was so tall that it also could have just been a tree stump that resembled a mountain lion. I set the bike down on the road margin and watched. The figure did not move at all, and I was becoming convinced it was a tree stump.

I recall I crouched down a bit, then stood up again, and then I saw it -- one of the ears twitched! Yes, it was a mountain lion, not moving other than that ear! So what did I do? I walked about 10 feet into the meadow to get a better look, of course. It was a mountain lion for sure. After looking for what seemed like a few minutes, I walked back to my bike, maybe 10 feet away on the road, When I looked back, the mountain lion was gone! Uh-oh. As in the ACF earlier that year, I did not want the lion to get any closer to me. So I immediately began my Kneeland climb, with some adrenaline helping my climbing pace, let's just say! I did not see it again.

So that's it, my two mountain lion sightings. Now 14 years in the past, those moments remain fresh in my mind. It is nice to have my old cycling journal to remind me of the dates. Its fair to say those sightings were very meaningful to me. I hope that we Californians can continue to share space for these beautiful and impressive animals, which have been in this land for long before we humans arrived.

If you have any mountain lion encounters that you would like to share, please do so in the comment section below:

Today up in Trione-Annadel State Park I saw two black-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus californicus) . They were chasing each other around the grassy meadow on the north side of Lake Ilsanjo. I found a story on the KQED website explaining how in March, male hares like jackrabbits are in the midst of their breeding season, and can get aggressive with each other (even standing up and boxing each other, which I have not observed). The story points out that the expression "mad as a March hare" derives from this aggressive behavior. I've linked to some photos I took of them. Of course I don't know that both of the jackrabbits were males.

Has anyone else seen especially active jackrabbits that might qualify as mad March hares?

Here's a link to the August 2015 KQED piece by Santa Rosa's own Michael Ellis that ties in to what I saw today:

https://www.kqed.org/perspectives/201508070643/rabbits-and-hares

On 14 Feb 2023 at approximately 12:30 pm I saw two bald eagles with mature plumage soaring above Spring Lake. Of course I was unable to get a photo of passable quality with my phone. Still, it was pretty cool. I'm wondering if anyone else may have seen them?