elbillaf's Journal

I navigated to https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/export , selected Lorton, VA and downloaded the CSV. A few observations, so to speak:

1. I notice all but two of the entries were in the Eastern Time Zone. One was in Pacific (US and CA) and the other in Hawaii TZ. I checked the lat longs and they're correct for this area, so I'm pretty sure it's not a software bug. Also, both of the observers have other observations in the area, so I'm thinking maybe a camera was not reset or possibly they just entered it incorrectly. Not a big deal. But I did wonder if one of those was local. (I'm pretty sure it is.)
2. I notice the field "out of range." Most of the entries for this field are empty, but some are set to either "TRUE" or "FALSE". I wasn't sure what this meant - about a species found out of range? About something else? The one instance of TRUE was a "common garter snake" and I guess I didn't consider that out of range for this area.

I googled "common garter snake and came up with this: http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/62240/0
indicating it is really is "common" (that would be an unfortunate name otherwise) and has a wide distribution. Anyway, I clicked on the "Map" link there (upper left corner) and it brought up this:
http://maps.iucnredlist.org/map.html?id=62240
As expected, it displayed the distribution of the snake includes this area. So it's not clear why that comes up as "out of range." Maybe there is another of this information. It would kind of make sense that there would be multiple lists maintained by different groups that contain maybe some different data (for different purposes) and maybe a lot of overlap. One would hope the data included in both projects would be similar. But one never knows without understanding.

I googled "iNaturalist out of range" and came up with this unrelated site that explains some things: https://colombia.inaturalist.org/pages/help#range
I don't know if it's linked to from an iNat page.

Anyway, "out of range" makes sense. It's just that "Common Garter Snake" out of range is bugging me. I doubt I'll bring this up in the discussion forum. Those guys have enough real issues to worry about.

1. Someone i think might be a developer mentioned a video on his "work flow". I hope I can find time this weekend to watch that.

A few things.

When I was walking to the path, I notice a lot of trees and brush had been cut down along the sidewalk. I hope they didn't chase off the ground hog.

I saw a cut tree down at the creek crossing - the beaver has been busy.

I saw a huge area where the grass had been pushed down. I'm thinking the family of deer I haven't seen for months has been sleeping there.

I noticed some fungus growing on a lot of the dead trees. I've seen that same stuff before. It's a bluish gray or greenish gray. I'm wondering if that's different varieties on the same stuff.

I looked in the stream at several points and never saw any fish.

Lotta garbage. I may take a bag with me next time.

On the way back I got a few snaps of a vulture of some kind. I thought it was a black vulture, but I think there was too much white on the underside of the wings. I've been wondering for some time whether the location means the location I was standing ... which can vary as I approach the plant or animal, or the animal, such as this bird, which is some distance from my GPS coordinates.

The primary reason I was out there. I left off a bit over a year ago checking in to this stuff. It's growing on a LOT of saplings in that area - a FEMA designated flood plain around the creek. I think it's a fungus ... but it could be some kind of tree mite, or some other bug. I just don't know.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9539264

I went walking this morning through a trail to the creek behind the house. On the way back I saw this fellow - barely 200 feet behind my yard. When I went out I saw a few cut saplings and immediately thought, "That looks like a beaver...but...up here? naaaah" then I came to a clearing at the end of my walk where a dozen or more smaller trees had been cut. I still thought, "....naaaaah?" Then I started coming in and this fat fellow and I startled each other! We both paused. There's a lot of bramble back there and it's hard to walk - I mean - really, really hard to walk (for me). I know they're not that dangerous, but you never know how animals will act when they feel threatened...so I composed myself and just walked a dozen or so steps down the path to let him pass....then I remember..."Crap! I got my camera right in my dang hands!" so I got a couple as he hustled his chubby self to the water and swam away. I think he may have his home in a couple logs fallen along the edge of the creek near where he entered the creek.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9539073

Now I've got a request in replace the bounding box for "Mark Center" with a KML I created from a map in an Alexandria City Plan map. I think the MC map will be a good draw for my coworkers and the Alexandria map will be a nice draw for the kids who come to science night. I'm not sure the developers have seen the KML I gave them or whether they have other things to do - or perhaps an unofficial KML is insufficient. We'll see. I'll wait a while and mention it again.

There's a woman at work who has expressed interest in doing a nature exhibit for science night - I may show the site (and the map) to her first to see if she has an interest in including this. Maybe should could incorporate this into her exhibit. OTOH, I could do a separate brochure - of recommended websites, say, and/or recommended apps and then give some pointers to iNature. I'll think about it.

I've made a decision that I'm not going to try to recover my old stuff. Maybe a few things - but mostly I'm going to start from scratch. As I type this I'm thinking of 4 or 5 older ones I would really like to keep. I'm a bit excited for spring to get here, but I'm strongly limiting myself to no more than 4 hours a week on this project of mine, unless it's combined with some other interest.

I deleted my formal project. I still have "my" project, of course - but I'm not implementing "my" project as an iNature project.

I need to understand better what the limitations are - both strict limitations and things that are discouraged. For example, it seems like cultivated plants / bred animals are not welcome, although the site clearly has a check box for indicating whether an observation falls into that category - so it appears its not strictly forbidden. OTOH, I think my intent to take pictures of shopping carts abandoned in the woods or trash accumulating in a flood plain are inappropriate for iNature, not for my bigger project - I just need to figure a way of documenting that stuff and linking. There are some things that are borderline - such as my discovery of and fascination with what I think was otter poop near my house. I was really excited for weeks - though my wife was annoyed about it. "You bought a camera to take pictures of that???" Anyway, I want to spend more time experimenting and reading through the site, so that I feel comfortable and even confident when spring comes round.

Learned a few things over at Open Data Stack exchange. And the other fellow said he learned something too. So that's a good thing.

Last night I posted a two-part query to the iNaturalist group forum on google. I got an answer today:
1) Apparently my Luna Moth is in the Lorton area. I just couldn't see it.

2) In even better news the fellow who responded was an iNat developer and he mentioned he could put in the KML, if provided, so I gave a link to what I extracted from the Census Bureau.

I'm not sure, but I think I'm going to delete my "project" as being more of a nuisance than anything. I see why they recommend doing the location search instead. I had not been doing this correctly before. It's a little confusing. I may make a recommendation on that later, after I've had some more practice. The thing about the location search is I get observations in that area regardless of whether any other people are part of a project. And my intuition about how it works is correct - if the GPS of the observation is in the specified region (bounding box or KML) then the observation is automatically reported for the location. No need to add it. Perfect.

Now I'm wondering if I can create a location near where I work! HA! I just checked! They have a bounding box. I think I may be able to scare up a KML from somewhere. This could be very interesting. I could create this other non-project, but point my colleagues to it as a sort of gift to them. Also, this could be part of the annual science night event that my employer lets us put on for the ACPS school system.

Yesterday, I made an image from the LORTON KML file I downloaded from census and imported to google "my maps." When I uploaded that to the project, it seemed to succeed, but the image didn't show correctly - instead it showed a "broken picture" icon. This morning I see the correct image!

That's weird, because other posts without tags showed up. None of the tags seemed appropriate, but I picked one that seemed close. In any case, it shows up and people have viewed it, but there is no response.

I noticed that my Lorton observations still do not show up in the Lorton, VA, US place, so the discrepancy is probably not due to "percolation time."

Also, I notice that the info for Lorton, VA, US place consists largely of wiki data - could be it was copied or it could be that it links to it automatically. That's interesting.

Still can't add a KML file to the Lorton, Location - or even tell whether the location already has a KML. It could be that such a thing would not be used. I thought I saw previously a way to upload it. I guess I could make a new location and at the KML, but that just seems wrong.

Also, still can't figure out how to get my existing observations associated with the location. I could delete them and reenter - That also seems really wrong.

The system said it was published, but I don't see my message. I'm already getting irritated.

1. On my Japanese Honeysuckle observation a big pink icon with an exclamation mark appeared with it saying where it was "introduced." I think this is because it's an invasive species.
2. I just noticed that the text colors for the observation IDs correspond to the colors in the species drop down list. That's a nice touch.
3. The Japanese Honeysuckle observation ended up in the "Chesapeake Bay Watershed Biodiversity" project. I don't recall adding it to that. Maybe I did it by accident, or maybe someone found it interesting that this invasive species is in this particular location. (I'm sure everyone realizes that it's in the area, but observations by a lot of people might help track its spread. I'm guessing.)