My personal observation standards
These are the standards I try and follow with my own observations, detailed here for the sake of transparency. You should see that at least the most recent of my observations follow these parameters. A lot of the older ones do not but I am trying to work backwards and update them. This understandably takes a lot of time so bare with me!
Photos:
- I try to ensure all of my photos are landscape in the ratio 4:3 as I think this looks nicest when viewing the observation from a browser on a computer.
- I try to make sure I take multiple photos of each organism, particularly when it is necessary or relevant to show close-up details or the surrounding habitat.
Sounds:
- If an audio clip contains mostly silence/background noise only occasionally punctuated by the animal noise of interest I try to highlight in the notes the specific timestamps in the clip which are relevant.
Location:
- I am increasingly making a deliberate effort to ensure all my locations are accurate and precise to at least 30 metres, if not (more often) 10, 5 or 1. The specific level of precision I choose is a reflection of how confident I am the specific pinned location is accurate. For many of my observations in urban areas, I will have pinned the location down to 1 m. Less certain degrees of precision tend to be associated with parks or wilder areas where there are fewer standout features to use as geospatial points of reference (e.g. forests are notoriously difficult).
- Where I have made a point of manually checking and updating the location data I will acknowledge this with a copy-and-pasted line in the 'notes' section that will look like this: "Observation location manually updated and made accurate to X m."
Date and time:
- In most cases because I take photos using my phone the date and time data will be accurate and can be trusted.
- The only exception to this rule are observations which have photos taken with my underwater camera (e.g. snorkelling photos). For these, because I cannot get the camera to record date/time metadata accurately, I will indicate in the 'notes' section the range of time for which the observation will have been made in, and pin the specific time to the halfway point of that period. For example, If I know I was snorkelling from 09:00 to 10:00 I will pin the timestamp at 09:30 and indicate in the notes that the 'true timestamp of the observation is somewhere between 09:00 and 10:00.
Notes:
- If I have manually checked and updated the observation location I will indicate this in the notes field and mention the degree of precision chosen.
- For mosses, liverworts and lichens I will indicate the physical substrate that the organism was growing on in the notes field.
- For observations showing species interactions (e.g. parasitism, herbivory, mutualism) which link to other observations I will mention the species involved in the notes section and provide a link to the other relevant observation.
- For underwater observations I will indicate the approximate depth (using a range) that the observation was made at.
Leading identification:
- When my first ID is made with no notes – this means I would make the given ID purely on being presented the photo with no additional help. In other words, these are species that I 'know' and can recognise without needing to consult other resources. In some cases I leave a single '?' in the notes field which indicates that I followed this process but am slightly uncertain.
- When my first ID is accompanied by notes – this means I consulted additional resources to help make the ID and could not have reached the chosen species name without them. Often such consultation is very quick and just involves quickly referring to a guide book or online resources.
- When my first ID is accompanied by 'algorithm suggestion' – this means I followed the algorithm suggestion 'blindly' and have not checked any further to see if it looks reasonable or if I can definitively exclude similar species. I tend to do this less and less often but you will see it is how I operated when I was starting out on the platform. These days I only tend to do this when (a) the algorithm is confident and gives only a single species suggestion and (b) I am being lazy. I also tend to follow the algorithm blindly more often for observations made outside the UK when I do not think it is worth my time to learn the intricacies of distinguishing similar species.
- When my first ID is accompanied by 'algorithm suggestion' and additional notes – this means that I have used the algorithm suggestion as a starting point and then made the further effort to check whether the suggestion is reasonable. Often this involves comparing the suggested species with similar species, checking distributions, checking habitats, and/or keying the individual out formally using guides or online resouces.
Annotations:
- I annotate my observations tentatively, meaning if there is any uncertainty I tend to lean on the side of caution and leave the field blank.
Observation fields:
Common observation fields that I use include:
- Physical substrate – for mosses, liverworts and lichens.
- Associated observation – to link related observations.
- Host plant – to give an ID for the host plant species in observations which show 'close' interactions between species. I define a 'close' interaction as one where I imagine it is unlikely the target species strays far from the host plant.
- Name of associated plant – to give an ID for the plant species involved in a more 'loose' interaction – e.g. an insect 'visiting' a plant.
