this guy was absolutely stunning. he was so vibrant that he almost looked like a pinkish-coral color.
he was super uncooperative but also super slow! he kept turning around and walking away at a turtle’s pace as I tried to photograph him. it was a bit frustrating, but it was also hilarious and I finally managed to get some decent photos :)
this guy was absolutely stunning. he was so vibrant that he almost looked like a pinkish-coral color.
he was super uncooperative but also super slow! he kept turning around and walking away at a turtle’s pace as I tried to photograph him. it was a bit frustrating, but it was also hilarious and I finally managed to get some decent photos :)
Hello, I recently started a project called Birds in Hand. It’s a collection of photos of birds being held. So far the only members are me and one other user, so I’d love more people to join and/or add observations!
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/birds-in-hand
The only requirements for an observation to be added to the project are:
Birds that are being handled at banding stations are great candidates for this project, but any observation that meets the above requirements is fine!
If you’re a bird bander or just someone who occasionally comes across in-hand photos when scrolling through bird observations, I’d love for you to add those observations to my project. It would be cool to get as many observations (and species!!!) as possible from all over the world.
Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions!
I really like collecting field guides to random things, partially for practical use and partially just for entertainment, depending on the subject.
I don’t really mind what region/continent they’re for because I enjoy learning about species from all over the world. I live in the southeastern United States, though, so field guides for that area or just North America in general are the most helpful for practical purposes.
Below is a list of some of the field guides I own. I know the Audubon ones are pretty widely hated, but I inherited all of those from my grandma and it’s the series that got me interested in field guides in the first place. I mostly have bird-related field guides, including a couple international Princeton ones that aren’t listed here, but I’m pretty lacking in other categories.
Does anyone have any field guide recommendations? I really don’t care what they’re for. Just tell me your favorite field guide and I’ll probably be interested as long as it’s decently written and informative :) I’m especially interested in field guides about habitats/natural communities, salamanders, and plants, but really I’m interested in everything nature-related!
Birds:
- National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Birds of North America
- Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds
- Audubon Society Field Guide to Birds - Eastern
Mammals
- Audubon Society Field Guide to Mammals
Herps
- Salamanders of the Eastern United States
Insects
- Audubon Society Field Guide to Butterflies
Plants and Fungi
- Audubon Society Field Guide to Wildflowers
- Audubon Society Field Guide to Mushrooms
Random:
- Collins Field Guide to National Parks of East Africa
inspired by another post on here. website: https://glauberramos.github.io/inat/
I’ve had inat for a while, but I’ve really only been active this year. I think I started with like 800 observations at the beginning of the year. I’ve become very obsessed :)
I’m not working right now because I don’t have transportation, so my sense of time is really thrown off. I also have ADHD, so my executive function isn’t great to begin with.
I was supposed to have a zoom orientation for a wildlife rehab that I had signed up to start volunteering regularly at, but I somehow forgot the date and didn’t attend. I finally realized about an hour later, but I felt like it would be disrespectful to reach out and tell them I had missed it.
I’m really sad about it now because I would’ve absolutely loved to volunteer at a rehab. I feel like it’s way too late to reach out at this point, and my best bet is probably waiting a few months before signing up again and hoping they don’t remember me… I really feel like an idiot and I’m so sad that I missed this opportunity :(
I was so excited when I came across this guy. he got scared and went into his shell at first, but then came out and let me get some photos. I’m really happy with how these iphone photos turned out, especially the first one!
I never really actively look for turtles, so I only see them when I happen to stumble upon them. this was the first living box turtle I’ve seen in the wild, despite having found a few of their empty shells in the past.
the eastern copperhead was from the same day, just about an hour before the box turtle. it was my first eastern copperhead, and he was right beside the trail. I wasn’t actively looking for either one, so this was a great day for herps! I guess they’re loving the hot weather right now.
I’ve been into salamanders for a while, but this day has definitely inspired me to expand my herp horizons and start looking for other species :)
this guy had some absolutely beautiful patterning that was highlighted by the wet sheen on his skin from the water. I found him dipnetting a couple weeks ago. he was the 48th observation of this species on iNaturalist!
I’m trying to learn to identify dusky salamanders in north Georgia. a lot of their ranges overlap and it’s impossible for me to tell the difference between most of them visually.
does anyone have any good resources? I know inaturalist is good, but I’d like to be able to identify them myself instead of relying on other people (even though they are helpful).
I volunteer at a couple bird banding stations in the southeastern US and I’d like to eventually become a bander myself.
I’ve been practicing looking for molt limits, not just during in-person banding sessions, but also looking at photos online at home during my free time. I often have a hard time spotting molt limits unless they’re really obvious, and sometimes I see “molt limits” where there aren’t any, eg pseudolimits.
it’s pretty overwhelming, so I want to narrow down the number of species I’m practicing with, and then expand to more species from there. I’d like to start with maybe 3-5 species that often have pretty obvious molt limits.
does anyone have any species suggestions? so far I’ve practiced a decent amount of black-throated blue warblers, and the males, at least, have been easier than most other species I’ve looked at.
found in the southern Appalachian foothills. my rarest salamander find and rarest inaturalist observation, with only 48 observations!
I don’t look at this sub a lot, but ornithology is my biggest interest and I plan on going into a career in it.
today I stumbled upon two posts from this sub, both about birds that had been killed (one by a window, one by a predator). multiple comments in each suggested using PPE to handle dead birds.
this confused me a bit because, while I know bird flu is absolutely a thing, I wouldn’t automatically assume a bird that died from a clear, non-sickness-related cause could have bird flu. if bird flu is so prevalent, I don’t know why we don’t use PPE at the three different bird banding stations I volunteer at. all we do is use hand sanitizer between birds.
so, how big of an issue is bird flu, really? do we really need to be using PPE for every wild bird whether it’s dead or alive? obviously I would avoid touching any birds that died for unknown reasons, especially if it was a group of dead birds in one area, but what about situations where we KNOW how the bird died?
hello! I am aiming to go into a career in wildlife biology. my main goal is to work seasonal field jobs, at least when I’m starting out. I’m really fine with anything wildlife or botany-related, but I’d prefer to work in something bird-related like banding, population counts, etc.
I have attended a bit of community college, but I recently moved and I’m planning on attending a slightly larger college in August to pursue a degree in field biology.
anyway, I’m not working right now, so I want to make sure I’m using my time in the best way possible to build my resume for my future career. here is what I’ve done so far/am currently doing:
- 35 hours volunteering for Christmas Bird Counts (1 count in winter 2024, 3 counts in winter 2025-2026)
- 80 hours volunteering at bird banding stations (2 sessions in 2024, 2 sessions in 2025, 10 sessions so far in 2026 since April, and I plan to continue attending at least weekly to bi-weekly for the foreseeable future). I have held 80 birds for practice since April and I have extracted 4 birds from nets since learning to extract 2 weeks ago. I plan to have over 200 hours of experience by the end of this year, and hopefully at least 100 extractions, but I will continue volunteering after this year as well.
- not sure whether this is worth mentioning on a resume, but I am an avid ebird and iNaturalist user. I have identified over 70,000 user observations on iNat and added annotations to over 3,000 observations. I’m planning to increase those numbers to at least 100,000 and 5,000 by the end of 2026.
things I’m planning on doing:
- I have signed up to begin volunteering weekly at a wild bird rehab starting in July
- I am thinking about signing up to become an iNaturalist ambassador and hosting/supporting local citizen science efforts and events
- I used to volunteer to annotate camera trap footage for a California-based mountain lion conservation organization (identifying the different animals in the photos). I haven’t done in it about 6 months, but would that look good on a resume if I started again and began doing it more consistently?
do you think my resume would look good with this experience? is there anything I should be doing that I’m not doing currently? any advice is appreciated. thanks so much!
I’m a self-taught amateur wildlife photographer as a hobby. I’ve never taken a class related to photography or editing, so my editing skills aren’t great. I’m just wondering if these photos are good enough to be sold as prints, be featured in an exhibition, win a contest, or anything like that! any critique/tips/information is very appreciated as well.
the first photo is my favorite, but the rest are in no particular order.
edit: thank you all for the feedback! I’m definitely not yet in a position where I’m seriously considering contests or anything, but wanted to post this as a way to get a feel of people’s opinions on my work so far :) I don’t think these photos are perfect by any means, but I like them for my own personal collection and I will definitely keep practicing so I can improve!
I went to a random park today with only about a dozen inaturalist observations, and it turned out to be mushroom heaven. I took over 200 photos of mushrooms on a ~1.5 walk, and I only photographed maybe 1/10 of the mushrooms I saw. most of them were absolutely massive.
I’ve never seen anything like this before. usually I can find a decent amount of small mushrooms, mostly very common ones, but today I was coming across mushrooms like every 10 steps. we haven’t had an absurd amount of rain or anything either, it’s rained like once within the past two weeks.
does anyone have any idea what would cause this? this was in Georgia (the state) by the way, so it’s not like we’re known for having a crazy amount of mushrooms like the pacific northwest. I’m just really curious about why there were so many mushrooms in one area!
I volunteer at two bird banding stations and I eventually want to become a bander myself, but aging birds seems impossible because the molting process is SO insanely confusing to me. I don’t really even know where to start. can anyone recommend some resources for learning about molt / aging birds for beginners? thank you!!
I found this baby just a few feet from the trail during my walk today :) I’m so glad I got to see a baby “hiding” for the first time. I usually only ever see them when they’re a little older and with their moms. I know mama should be nearby, so I just took a couple photos (from a distance, these are zoomed in) and moved on without bothering him!
this is extremely niche and I don’t really know how to describe it, but the way the sunlight looks in the middle of the day REALLY bothers me. I guess I would say it kind of makes me depressed (I already have depression, but it gets way worse at this time of day)
I absolutely love the way the sun looks in the morning (sunrise to ~9:30ish) and the evening (~4:00ish to sunset) and it makes me really happy, but I just hate the way it looks mid-day for some reason. I love the golden glow everything has in the morning and the evening, but everything looks kinda washed out mid-day.
it’s bad enough that I’ll avoid going outside in the middle of the day, even though I love nature, birdwatching, hiking, etc at other parts of the day. in my ideal day, it would be cloudy from 10am to 4pm, and sunny the rest of the day. I would hate for it to be cloudy all day though, except on rare occasions maybe
can anyone relate to this in any way? I’ve never heard anyone else describe something like this and nothing comes up when I google it, so it seems like a really weird, niche problem lol. it really bothers me and makes me feel horrible in the middle of the day though
feel free to ask me to clarify anything!
this is extremely niche and I don’t really know how to describe it, but the way the sunlight looks in the middle of the day REALLY bothers me. I guess I would say it kind of makes me depressed (I already have depression, but it gets way worse at this time of day)
I absolutely love the way the sun looks in the morning (sunrise to ~9:30ish) and the evening (~4:00ish to sunset) and it makes me really happy, but I just hate the way it looks mid-day for some reason. I love the golden glow everything has in the morning and the evening, but everything looks kinda washed out mid-day.
it’s bad enough that I’ll avoid going outside in the middle of the day, even though I love nature, birdwatching, hiking, etc at other parts of the day. in my ideal day, it would be cloudy from 10am to 4pm, and sunny the rest of the day. I would hate for it to be cloudy all day though, except on rare occasions maybe
can anyone relate to this in any way? I’ve never heard anyone else describe something like this and nothing comes up when I google it, so it seems like a really weird, niche problem lol. it really bothers me and makes me feel horrible in the middle of the day though
feel free to ask me to clarify anything!