Diario de lynnharper
Only seven days till MIIDGE 2021 starts on Friday, June 18th - are you ready? Have you plotted your route for each day? Laid in enough snacks to keep you going? Prayed to the weather gods? Concocted your moth bait? Coordinated with your naturalist friends? Charged all the batteries?
We're getting excited - we hope you are, too!
I was pleased to notice yesterday that I have contributed over 17,000 observations to iNaturalist - and then I was rather shocked to notice that over 100 people follow me on iNat! I'm shocked because, while I know I post lots of observations of all sorts of species (OK, I admit it, I'm obsessed), I don't think of myself as an expert, so why are you all following me?
Yeah, I have a biology degree and, yeah, I worked for MassWildlife for twenty years, but I'm not an expert in anything. I can never keep Yellow-rumped and Magnolia Warblers straight. Female Common Whitetail and Twelve-spotted Skimmer dragonflies: one has a solid yellow line down the side of her abdomen, one has a series of slanted yellow dashes, but do you think I can remember which is which? No, I cannot. Red and White Baneberry: something about the thickness of the pedicels separates those, but it took me till last week to come up with the mnemonic that wiiiide pedicels means Whiiiiite Baneberry. (Boy, I hope that's correct.)
In short, I don't know everything, and those of you who follow me should remember that I might not always be correct in my IDs. But it gives me so much joy to observe and learn something new almost every week - really, almost every day in the summer - and that is all due to iNaturalist. A couple of days ago, a friend and I were walking in a Black Tupelo swamp nearby and I noticed that some of the tupelo leaves had ruffled edges. (Here's the iNat observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/82815564.) While I was sorting and uploading that batch of photos to iNat, I happened to notice that billmac had seen and posted something called the Tupelo Leaf Edge Gall Mite (here's his observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/80658794). Lo, that's what I had seen! That's a species I didn't even know existed and I got to see it in the town next to mine. Who needs to go to the tropics when you can go to Petersham? (Well, I do WANT to go to the tropics....)
I've been starting to learn lichens and moths over the past year and I have really appreciated it when other iNaturalists correct my clumsy attempts at IDing a lichen or a moth. And that's why I titled this post what I did: it's only by making mistake after mistake that I learn, and I encourage you to get out there and do the same. Plus, it's FUN!
We are halfway through MIIDGE2021 and I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to get confused about where I am, which observations I've uploaded and which I've not, and where I'm due to go next.
In other words, I am having fun, and Dave Small and I certainly hope you are, too! The weather is and will be good, so get out there and enjoy!
--Lynn Harper
I just updated the project requirements to exclude Unknown observations - oops! Thank you to Dave Small for pointing that out.
-- Lynn Harper
The observations are still trickling in, but it looks as though this year was quieter than last year, despite good weather. There were fewer observers and project members than last year, so maybe more people are out and about, rather than concentrating on inverts in their backyards? Tom Murray (tmurray74) is still far and away the most prolific observer, both in terms of number of species and total number of observations (I swear the guy doesn't sleep!). He's also the participant with the most number of identifications for other observers.
We hope you had a wonderful time and saw all sorts of fascinating creatures, right here in Massachusetts. Thanks!
-- Lynn Harper and Dave Small
