Diario de finatic

I'm fortunate in having a wife who enjoys extended road trips as much as I do. To make me even luckier, she enjoys doing the driving so that I can focus on my attention on the flora and fauna of the places we are passing through. During our recent trip through Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada and California I started trying to photograph while we were on the move after noticing all the roadkill on the sides of the highway. This then morphed into shooting birds (mostly raptors) and some larger plants. This was difficult, especially up north where the posted speed limit is 80 MPH.

For years I've wanted to record a bird species in each and every county in the US. Now, with the advent of iNaturalist I want to have an observation with media in each of those counties. Yes, I'm an iNaturalist addict and proud of that fact! But, these observations do have scientific purpose especially in less visited areas of our country. It's a way to document what species you can while trying to get from Point A to Point B without time to stop.

Here is a map showing my progess on recording a bird in each county

Hopefully one day iNat will be able to create map like this for each person with their observations.

So, on your next trip I recommend letting someone else drive and have your camera ready. I suggest having a DSLR where you can set the shutter speed to at least 2000/sec but any camera where you can set it to take fast enough photos will work. Plan on taking lots of photos that are going to be immediately trash worthy, but hopefully you'll get a surprise, like I did with a Wolverine http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/6676965. And, had I not been doing this, I wouldn't have gotten photos of a Common Raven eating a Deer Mouse http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/6676981.

So, take the challenge and give this a try. If nothing else, you'll pass the time trying to document species.