Observation field: Habitat Use
Lately I bundled four observation fields to "Built Environment" project. One of them is "Habitat Use". Field can be used to describe how animal is using the habitat in this particular observation.
Possible values and examples:
- food
- water (animal accessing water)
- grit (bird using sand for digestion, maybe chalc could be added here too?)
- cleaning (any resource used for cleaning)
- nest
- shelter (animal hiding to protective surroundings)
- platform (animal resting or moving at man made (or natural) structure)
- life cycle (habitat containing all/multiple aspects and activities for organism without specifically concentrating in any of them)
- other
Some wordings are possibly not perfect, and more could be added.
You can add the field by typing "habitat use" (without quotes) at observation fields section of your observation page. Also when you add observations to "Built Environment", values for different observation fields are asked - if you decide to use these fields, be exact, otherwise it's ok to just leave them unfilled.
Further details of the "Habitat Use" field and observation examples: https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/17919
Comments
Great! I think it could very useful so I will start adding it to my observations.
@cenaida Yes, using fields "Habitat Use" with "Rewilding" we can have for example bird nest boxes as "planned" + "nest", bird feeders "planned" + "food"... and different variations. There's of course dedicated projects for such things, but I think these fields could be even "powerful" in combining different aspects. Interesting to see how they work, and how they could possibly be improved.
I am trying to add it to my observations. The one field I find a problem is the name of the Reservation or Park. I live in Australia and I find I cannot put the name of the Park in which I made the observation. I have to use "Other". Is there a way to make that an open entry so we can add the specific name of the park?
@kalimata What field are you talking about? Location? This "Habitat Use" field is meant for describing the main thing animal is doing in observation. I can add more options to this field, but you must be talking about some other field or iNat feature? You could add an example observation to show what you're looking for. + If the field is not suitable for your needs, you can leave it unused. There's no use in adding obscure data.
Thank you @kaupunkilinnut. Okay, I will leave it unused. I am unable to add obscure data. So please do not worry.
Sorry, I troubled you.
In my area, larger raptors often use cell towers as roosts (and Ospreys nest on them). Would it be possible/helpful to add an environment type for that? (It's a different kind of structure from an electrical transmission tower. They use those too, sometimes, but they seem to like the cell towers better.)
@taylorse For "Built Environment type" observation field? Sure, I added it.
I've copied the list from other similar field which was no longer updated and I possibly would have instead preferred to combine all electronic/eletrical utilities into one single value as there's very little observations currently and I'm unsure if all those distinctions are needed. What's your opinion? If you like the distinction we can keep it this way, but any ideas to better organize those fields are welcome as long as there's not too much observations included in those fields as the field values have to be updated manually if changes are made - from that perspective just adding new values is easier.
@kaupunkilinnut I would be fine with combining them. I don't know from a research perspective, but just practically it is hard to figure out which from that looooong list to choose for any given situation. A shorter, more general list would encourage more people to use it. Or at least having the option of choosing more general categories might help.
For example, if birds are scavenging under the tables at an outdoor restaurant in a strip mall, is that Commercial-Retail or Commericial-Mall? It would be easier to be able to just pick "Commercial" if in doubt of which to use. That could also help with having to constantly add more categories as people think of more examples. (Restaurants! Street lights! Breakwalls! Lighthouses!)
@taylorse Yes, definitely. I will immediately add general values Agriculture, Commercial, Community... etc. to start work. I could later remove some of the confusing choises from the list. As said, I have had another list as basis for this and I didn't start from scratch. Also if I make alternations now when values are already added, they don't update automatically but has to be manually updated one by one of changes are made to existing values. If you have more comments (which are welcome) let's continue discussion at bottom of observation fields page https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/15145 where's dedicated discussion for it, so others can possibly find it.
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