I've created this field to match the field of the same name on iNaturalist.

That might be useful, especially when its a loose feather rather than part of a carcass.

How about changing Nest to Nest/Burrow? Or something that would cover a wide range of animals.

I don't mind if you change it to nest/burrow but I don't remember if I added nest or if someone else did

Though I'm not sure where I would put bee/wasp nests. A hive is as much a home as a nest, a bumblebee might have a burrow, which is a nest too.

I see "burrow" was added sometime, I thought we were going for nest/burrow - is a kingfisher hole a nest or a burrow?

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.).

Good point about kingfishers. And bees. I agree that an old bee nest found inside an excavated burrow would be a nest. And that if the bees were still there, we wouldn't be using this field at all.

So, I think we're good!

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

Thanks :-)

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.

Good spotting. I'd not noticed that one before. There is a fair amount of overlap. Oh well. That's just the way it goes. One day we might attempt trying to merge some of these but in the meantime the main thing is that these extra details are being recorded.

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.

Hey, now that's a great idea! Would you like to add it to the iNaturalist forum? I can see that being an elegant way to allow people to name fields what they need for projects without this constant duplication of fuctionality.

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?

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.

OK. Done page 2 and 3 of the fossil observations. I'm hitting the sack now but will update page 1 tomorrow.

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".

That will be useful.

Yes, I was wondering if "Shell/exoskeleton" is too broad and shell should be removed. And exoskeleton could be "Exoskeleton/Moult" to include reptile skins. Of course, the Americans spell it "Molt" so there would be that to contend with.

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.

ha, indeed. Though the lack of sleep has more to do with toddler teething than iNaturalist...

ha! we've got aways to go before that. But what an annoyance to go through all that pain and lost sleep only to have the child teeth fall out in a few years anyway

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?

@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".

how would you all mark down a beaver dam here? I hate to make a new category just for that (i think there is another field for beavers anyway)

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.

well, i usually see the dam, and not always the lodge. I am not sure i'd call a dam a nest.
I am ok with burrow/den except it will break all the old data, right?

"Burrow/den" sounds like an excellent solution.

@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.