Getting Started with iNaturalist for Bowerbird Users

This tutorial is meant to orient the BowerBird community with the basics of iNaturalist

Part 1: Making an iNaturalist account & requesting ‘Migration Assistance’ from iNaturalist

Step A: Go to www.inaturalist.org and click ‘Sign up’

Step B: From www.inaturalist.org/signup follow 1-5 to create an account

Step C: You should now be logged in and viewing your Dashboard at www.inaturalist.org/home
Note your Username (e.g. ‘loarie’).

Step D: Send an email to help@inaturalist.org including your iNaturalist Username and you Bowerbird Username. Indicate in the email that you would like iNaturalist staff to copy observations from your Bowerbird account to your iNaturalist account

Part 2: Find and Join the Bowerbird Project

Step A: Expand the ‘Community’ tab in the header and click on Projects to navigate to www.inaturalist.org/projects

Step B: Search for or click on the Bowerbird project (it’s currently Featured) to navigate to www.inaturalist.org/projects/bowerbird

Step C: Join the project

iNaturalist has ‘Traditional’ Projects and ‘Collection’ Projects. Traditional Projects work a lot like projects on Bowerbird, you have to join them and then add observations to them. The Bowerbird Project is a Collection Project.

Collection Projects are configured to automatically find appropriate observations and display them. For example, the Bowerbird Project is displaying all observations from Australia and Christmas Island made by the list of users. This means you do not have to add your observations to Collection Projects, the project does it automatically. If you’re username is not yet among the list of users, one of the admins will add you.

Step D: Click through to an observation page, such as www.inaturalist.org/observations/25490021
On the lower right side of an Observation page you’ll see a section for Projects. If you join a Collection Project (like the Bowerbird Project) a link to the project will appear on your relevant observations.
All Observations imported through the ‘assisted migration’ also have the ‘Bowerbird URL’ Observation Field which includes a link to the original record on Bowerbird

Part 3: Uploading Observations, Exploring Observations, and Adding Identifications

The Bowerbird Project offers a somewhat more focused portal into the iNaturalist website which can be a bit overwhelming at first. From this page you can get to the core functionality:
(1) Upload - uploading observations is explained in this video tutorial: www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials#add_web
Then click on the Observations tab to reveal links to
(2) Search - exploring observations is explained in this video tutorial: www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials#explore
(3) Identify - identifying observations is explained in this video tutorial:
www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials#identify

Part 4: Communicating with other users

To communicate on iNaturalist you can:
(1) Send individual users private direct messages
When someone interacts with your content (ie leaves a comment or an identification) you’ll generally receive
(2) A red notification in the header and
(3) A notification in your Dashboard Feed
Likewise, when you interact with other people’s content this will generate notifications for them. Notifications are distilled into a daily email digest.
(4) the iNat Forum is also a great place to have conversations with the community

Also, you can ‘mention’ people by writing their name in a comment preceded by an @, e.g. @loarie. Mentions generate notifications and are great ways to get a person’s attention

Also don’t forget help@inaturalist.org for any questions.

Posted on May 22, 2019 04:47 PM by

loarie

Comments

Hi folks,

Just a quick update on the status of of the data migration from BowerBird to iNaturalist. Over 18,000 observations have been transferred so far.

12 requests have been completed:
jennygreatwestern, zosterops99, kenharris, lrogan, mattcampbellaus, graham_winterflood, frank_prinz, rogstanden, janetgrevillea, daviaker, karenretra, irene_r

2 are in progress:
annalanigan, donnamareetomkinson

5 are still pending
clag, kim-tarpey, ellurasanctuary, reiner, tleitch

While it will be great to get this data transfer finished to help everyone get established on iNaturalist. We're really eager to keep momentum up and make sure everyone gets the hang of posting new observations and making new IDs on iNaturalist. To try to make this fun and 'set a deadline', we set up this little Orientation Bioblitz and challenged each of you to make 10 new observations observed between now and the end of the month and 5 identifications on someone else's observations from this set. We set up the project to count all observations made by folks who have requested data transfers made between May 20 and May 31. It looks like reiner has already passed his 10 observation requirement - not surprisingly ;)

Does this sound good? Getting over the hump of gaining comfort making observations and identifications using the iNaturalist interface rather than the BowerBird interface might seem like a difficult task to be put off until later. But if we can encourage each other to figure that out sooner than later, I think its an important part of a successful transition to iNaturalist and preventing the community from dispersing. I've also added myself to the BioBlitz so I can join you even though my contributions from here in California are going to throw the map off a bit...

@clag @kim-tarpey @ellurasanctuary @reiner @tleitch @annalanigan @jennygreatwestern @zosterops99 @kenharris, @lrogan, @mattcampbellaus, @graham_winterflood, @frank_prinz, @rogstanden, @janetgrevillea, @daviaker, @donnamareetomkinson @karenretra, @irene_r

Posted by loarie almost 5 years ago

I would love to join, however I will be away from my computer for the next six weeks. I will continue contributions with iNaturalist on return. Graham_Winterflood

Posted by graham_winterflood almost 5 years ago

HI Graham, no problem. But do you have a iPhone or Android device? If so, you can download the iNaturalist app and try making the 10 observations from the app.

Thanks @loarie for all of this incredible support to keep the Bowerbird community together. I think it will really help to get Australians much more active on iNaturalist. It's about time we start catching up with the NZers ;-). The competition sounds good, although the Tasmanian insects may not be obliging in this weather :-)

Posted by zosterops99 almost 5 years ago

I spent hours last night id'ing for other bowerbirders, mainly Frank Prinz's & Linda Rogan's in SA, about 70 or so I think. But the stat's aren't showing them?
Cheers
Brett

Posted by ellurasanctuary almost 5 years ago

Thanks @loarie I'll endeavour to add 10 new sightings, so long as time permits. With my records transferring over (thank you so much again for that), I've actually taken this morning off work just to catch up on all the comments, etc.

But I'll see what I can add over the weekend.

Cheers

Matt

Posted by mattcampbellaus almost 5 years ago

Thanks Matt, Brett and Kristi. I just made my 10 observations picking my daughter up at the museum.

Brett, the Orientation Bioblitz identification leaderboard counts identifications on the set of observations grouped by the Bioblitz. Not exactly what we want, I know. So it will include IDs by people outside of the group of observers, and won't count IDs you make on observations not in the group.

Ah, of course, I was mainly id'ing the sightings ported from Bowerbird. Thanks again Scott :-)

Hi everyone, you will probably see a lot of moth photo's (64) come through from me with no ID's on them. I had put these onto BB in a rush, as they were on my desktop pc which had started acting up, (making weird groaning & sparking noises & freezing etc) and I had quickly moved them over to BB in case my PC suddenly died., thinking I would go back later when I had time to ID them. So there will be a heap of moths coming through on the site now which will need ID's as they've been transferred over now.

Posted by donnamareetomkinson almost 5 years ago

@donnamareetomkinson there's also no problem posting observations without IDs or with very coarse IDs. You or someone else can always add IDs later

Ok for the first time we've completely caught up with requests. I tally
31,267 observations representing 5,508 species from 23 people with identifications from 318 other members of the community
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=grid&verifiable=any&view=observers&field:Bowerbird%20URL=

If you know of anyone else who may be interested in help migrating from BowerBird to iNaturalist, please tell them to contact us.

Otherwise, please have a go at the 'challenge' mentioned above. And let us know if there's anything else we can do to help

Almost there with my additional 10 sightings and have certainly done a lot more than 5 ID's on others ;)

I'm going to keep playing around with things but I will have a few questions regarding projects. I've created one for Morwell National Park yet I can't seem to narrow the area down to just that, it wants to include the entire boundary for the old Shire of Morwell. It also seems to have automatically added around 120 of my sightings but I'd have 100's more from within that area. It also won't allow me to select it as a project when I try adding my sightings to a project?

Anyway, not asking for answers right now @loarie. Again, thank you for the smooth transition and I will most definitely be adding a lot more ;)

Hi Matt, if you want a project to tally observations with locations in a boundary you have to add an inaturalist place with that boundary to the observation requirements section on the project edit page. If an inaturalist place with the boundary you want doesn’t already exist you can creat a new inaturalist place and then it will be available to use in a project. Hope this helps

Thanks mate! I'll check that out later and give it a try :)

Thank you for such a smooth transition Scott! A few of my old id's have been changed from those on Bowerbird, it's been great to learn new information and update our records :-)
Cheers
Brett

@mattcampbellaus I made a place for Morwell National Park using the boundary from https://www.protectedplanet.net/morwell-national-park-national-park You can now use it to filter obs like
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=140034
I updated the project to use that new place https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/morwell-national-park
hope that helps
looks like 960 species from the park so far!

Thank you so much yet again @loarie You've been an enormous help. I just checked out the new map and it is perfect :D

Hopefully we won't need to bother you again, slowly getting the hang of things and been putting up a few sightings ;)

Awesome! always happy to help!

Thanks so much Scott, that is fantastic and is working beautifully now
Ken

Posted by kenharris almost 5 years ago

Thanks to reiner mattcampbellaus tleitch & karenretra for completing the observation part of the Orientation Bioblitz challenge. I've extended the Bioblitz end date from May 31 to Jun7 so BowerBird users who are continuing to join iNaturalist can participate.

I think the BB migration is tapering off, but I extended the Bioblitz to Aug 1 2019 to accomodate some recent arrivals

Damn, now we all have to get out more!

Ha Ha :-)