How you knew the animal was here if you did not observe it directly and visually
Observation | Animal Sign and Song |
---|---|
Photos / SoundsWhatLittle Owl (Athene noctua)Observerjon_sullivanDescriptionI'm thinking this has been regurgitated, rather than being scat. I expect it was a little owl. It certainly liked insects. Bonus points if anyone can identify any of the insects here (I'm guessing the beetle elytra are Megadromus antarcticus and have added that as a separate observation. It looks like there are some wētā legs in here too.) |
Evidence of Feeding |
None Recorded | |
Photos / SoundsWhatNew Zealand Sea Lion (Phocarctos hookeri)ObserverkarrihartleyDescriptionTracks. Animal observed. Large male making its way up to sand dunes from shore. |
Tracks |
None Recorded | |
None Recorded | |
None Recorded | |
Fur/Feathers | |
Photos / SoundsWhatNew Zealand Pigeon (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae ssp. novaeseelandiae)Observerkowhaitreehugger |
Fur/Feathers |
Nest | |
WhatMerlin (Falco columbarius)ObserverwonderwhatifDescriptionSeen on two different occasions through the evening. While gardening, we heard a loud thwack and saw what looked to both of us like a bird of prey colliding with a crow while making a loud noise similar to this. Neither of us were sure which bird as we have little experience with birds of prey or birdcalls. Was pretty happy when he returned later making a similar sound and Merlin app was able to ID it as a Merlin. Husband who saw it better than me, said it did look like the photo. |
Call/Song |
None Recorded | |
WhatMistletoe Miner (Zelleria sphenota)Observerbutterfly4DescriptionLarval leaf mines numerous on Ileostylus micranthus in Oban township |
Evidence of Feeding |
Call/Song | |
Fur/Feathers | |
Fur/Feathers | |
Fur/Feathers | |
WhatSouth African Mantis (Miomantis caffra)Observermike68luskDescriptionecdysed cuticle of the SA species I think |
Shell/Exoskeleton |
Scat | |
Evidence of Egg Laying | |
Evidence of Egg Laying | |
Evidence of Feeding | |
Nest | |
Nest | |
Fur/Feathers | |
Fur/Feathers | |
Photos / SoundsWhatNew Zealand Mantis (Orthodera novaezealandiae)ObserverdustinlamontPlaceWaimakariri River Regional Park, West Melton Forest, Kowhai Savannah, McLeans Island, Christchurch 7676, New Zealand (Google, OSM)DescriptionOld, with algal growth. On ?kānuka in fenced area near pines |
Evidence of Egg Laying |
Scat | |
Scat | |
Evidence of Egg Laying | |
Evidence of Egg Laying |
I agree, but one of the curator guidelines is not to make arbitrary changes to existing categories in other people's custom fields (I don't think it will change past observations that use "nest", although there aren't that many and we could do that manually).
Would you instead want burrow to be a separate category? That might work better.
I see what Jon means about little used, 4 of the 5 uses were added by me, I possibly added Maurice's observation too. If I removed all current uses, would that help :-). The field is not species/genera specific for other values (eg calls/song can refer to any animal from Cicada to Whale), so to differentiate between animals that build nests and other structures would seem odd - except if we differentiate "nest" to being a structure for reproductive purposes and a "burrow" just being a "home"... I think I've talked myself into accepting "burrow" as separate (so long as people can find this documentation ;-), is there a better word that denotes "home", "den"? "burrow/den"?
Thanks Charlie.
And yes, Tony, I thought some more about this and needed burrow so just added it. It was better that than going back and changing all the "nest" observations to "nest/burrow". I expect it's good to be able to separate those sometimes.
For a kingfisher, I'd say if you looked or felt in the hole and found a nest with eggs, chicks, or egg shell, then it's a definitely nest. Nest trumps burrow. But if you didn't do that, and there was no sign of reproduction going on, then burrow would work just as well. I admit that this one's a bit ambiguous.
The trick is that, for some animals, burrows can be roosts or nests. Nest to me means a place for birth and rearing of young. Since bees and wasps always build their burrows for reproduction, nest seems the most appropriate for them. But it shouldn't be much trouble for whoever uses this data to sort through and reclassify by taxa as necessary in their analysis (if Hymenoptera, burrow = nest, etc.).
Yes a kingfisher burrow is only constructed for nesting purposes, and so by your bee example should be classed as a nest instead :-).
As this field is only for when an animal isn't directly observed, I wouldn't use it for bees as invariably it is the bees leaving/entering that indicates the nest - so this field isn't appropriate. I suppose if I found an old bee nest (with no bees present) when turning over a compost pile then 'nest' would be appropriate.
Can we have a value of "Not recorded" set as the first option because a number of projects are now using this field, but often it is irrelevant and not filled, but defaults to "Tracks".
eg "Tracks" is meaningless in all these plant observations inaturalist.org/observations?q=&search_on=&taxon_name=Plantae&taxon_id=47126&order_by=observations.id&order=desc&field%3Aanimal+sign+and+song=Tracks&view=table
Also, Jon, I totally give you permission to make arbitrary changes to my field... I made it looong ago when fields were new and i found some animal poop or something, didn't know it would becom the default field to use for this and since I mostly observe plants (and I observe almost nothing during the harshest winter in 50 years or whatever) I haven't used it much lately
I've just added "window print" for observations like this one: https://inaturalist.nz/observations/1369072
Its a phrase in use elsewhere on the internet for the bird imprint left by window strike.
Thanks to tony_wills for suggesting this.
I just came across http://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/1484, but I think this field name is rather more literary than "evidence type"
(And judging from the number of projects using this one, it has the public vote of approval :-)
About 6 months ago I went through an exercise of loading all the fields into a spreadsheet, categorizing them and looking at what could be merged. Arrgghh, even if you ignore the different language versions there is a lot of unnecessary duplication (like certain kereru projects that choose a different field name for the perfectly serviceable "count" ;-). The field merge tool needs to be a lot more sophisticated, allow mapping of old to new field values, and cater for upper/lowercase differences (which are seen as different values).
Yes. I was concentrating on other things when the kereru count folk locked in those kereru specific fields.
I agree that better field curation tools are needed. As we continue to grow globally, hopefully that will happen. Your spreadsheet sounds useful though. What any researcher using the data really needs is a field map of what is equivalent to what. Duplicate fields are OK as long as they can be brought together in the stats.
Would you like to make that more widely available? We could host it on the NatureWatch NZ blog if nowhere else.
Fossil is a special case, I reckon. Enough to justify it's own field, fossil.
What do you think, @tony_wills? Should I also remove the option from Animal sign and song?
One advantage of having these fields separate is we can keep fossil scat (e.g., here) separate from fossil bones, shells, etc.
Agreed, it doesn't quite fit here, as some are of course not animal fossils. But one idea of having it in here is so that you can exclude any observations where the organisms wasn't actually present at the time of the observation, by just excluding observations with this field (though that doesn't work for 'song' as the animal is present, but maybe not seen ;-).
No real problem with removing the value from here, but have you added all these ones to the new field?
.. Just checked, 74 using this value, only 32 have the new field so far.
Thanks. I'm going through them now. I've done the third page and am working through the second page at the moment.
As you note, it also works better for the plant fossils.
I suppose we can always specify both fields to get the observations of things not present at the time of observation (but, yes, we'd have to side step the song option). Maybe that should be separate too, but that would be a more time consuming split.
Thanks Tony. I just finished. All fossil observations in here are now moved to the fossil field and all animal fossils now have the relevant value added to "Animal sign and song" (usually "shell/exoskeleton" or "remains"). I've now removed the "fossil" option from the drop-down for "Animal sign and song".
@jon_sullivan: I suppose we should use that for empty bird eggshells too eg /observations/1181749
Yes get rid of 'shell'. Birds eggshells, old insect egg masses are all evidence of eggs being laid (ie evidence of an adult animal being here, we don't know whether the eggs were successful). And shellfish shells, rams horn squid floats, and bones can all be termed 'remains'. There is perhaps a better field for these dead animals as this field is mainly about a live animal being here recently (or present nearby).
Exoskeletons of dead animals are just 'remains' (like bones), so perhaps just Moult/Molt for the evidence that a live animal was here. Not sure where crab carapaces should go, often can't really tell whether dead or just a moult?
oh man i am sleep deprived and i just misread that post as 'evidence of birds getting laid' and i was thinking well, kinda but that's a really weird way to think about it.
I feel like shed antlers etc mean something different than finding bones because the former fall off from a living healthy animal and the latter pretty much always mean the animal died.
Thanks @star3
I don't much like rewording existing categories unless I can help it because then we're stuck with lots of obs with old wording to update. I wonder if we should keep "shell/exoskeleton" as it is (to deal with things like in crab shell and snail shells), keep using "evidence of egg laying" when we find the special case of egg shells, and add a new category for "shed skin" for non-exoskeleton moults.
One benefit of "shed skin" is that it side-steps the spelling of molt/moult.
@tony_wills and @charlie, does that sound good to you?
yeah good point about old observations and changes.
To be honest I am more of a botanst and don't have a good feel for what categories are most important for more involved animal study. I just created this field very long ago when not many others were on the site. So whatever you all decide is fine with me
@jon_sullivan, I also like "shell/exoskeleton" as a separate category from egg shells.
What would everyone think of amending "shell/exoskeleton" to "shell/exoskeleton/shed skin"? I think shed snake skins fit in with exoskeleton thematically, and I think you 'd want to keep the adjective "shed" to separate it from skins that would fall under "remains".
There is a little used field called 'beaver lodge' but that should probably be merged with 'beaver evidence' (which has 'lodge' as an option). If it is known that the beaver has young in the lodge, I suppose you could also add 'animal sign and song->nest' too.
@charlie I'd suggest just using "nest" here for a beaver lodge, and using one of the beaver specific fields that @tony_wills mentions to provide more detail. Although does "nest" always imply young? Perhaps we need to add "den" to capture animals' shelters that are not for nesting.
@dave_holland has suggested to me that "marine mammal spout", or similar, should be added to "animal sign and song". He notes that some whales and dolphins can be identified by their distinctive spouts. What do you reckon? It makes sense to me. It's analogous to "Call/Song" and "Smell", where the animal is still nearby but not seen. @charlie @tony_wills
Sounds sensible to me. I also agree with Charlie that the field is a little wayward and could do with some rationalisation, eg fur/feathers, shed skin, and perhaps shell/exoskeleton (in particular molts) are basically all the same type of sign. I suppose it depends on how the field is used in projects as to whether anything can be done.
I've created this field to match the field of the same name on iNaturalist.