INaturalist

If you go down to the woods today….

You may find something interesting. It may be a plant, a bird singing its head off or one of the many mosses or lichens that are in the woods. Why not record that you’ve seen it? It will be of interest to other people in the community and the community woodland group would be delighted to see what other people are finding in the woods. Who knows, you might find a rare plant.

iNaturalist App

The community woodland group have started using the iNaturalist App. This allows anybody who has the app to very easily record what they are seeing. All you have to do is turn on your location, and take a photo of the animal, plant, moss etc that you are seeing. And as for that bird that’s singing its head off – you can record that in the app too. Once you’ve taken your photo(s) or sound recording you can then get the app to identify what you’ve found. If it can’t recognise it, then type in Unknown. Now you can save your record. It will automatically upload to the iNaturalist site. As you have your location set, it will take the location, name, date and time and record those along with your photo or sound recording.

But I’m No Expert!

Nor am I! But iNaturalist does a lot of the identification for you. Plus, there’s a whole community out there who can also see your observation and can also help identify it for you. Once your observation has had a couple of observations it will be available for researchers who are running natural history or environmental research.

How Will It Help The Community Woodland Group

Apart from it being really interesting to see what plants people are finding it will also help us in managing and maintaining the woodland. If you find a rare plant or a plant of special interest, then we can put in mitigation measures to help protect the plant when we are carrying out work in the woodland. Also, you may find plants that have spread into the woodland that may affect plants within the woodland, perhaps it’s a plant that is known to spread quickly. If we know it’s there, then we can deal with it.

What Can I Record?

The app lets you record: Plants, mammals, insects, spiders, birds, fungi and lichens, reptiles and amphibians. Of course, you can use it elsewhere and can also observe molluscs, fish etc.

Advance Warning of Event

The community woodland group are currently planning a Plant Hunt on the morning of the 31 May. This will be a family friendly event and will use the iNaturalist app to record plants, fungi and lichens within the woodland. We will also have volunteers of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland present who will help with identification.  We will give you more details of that closer to the time, but why not get used to using the app by downloading it today?

Why not view our existing findings by clicking here.  We look forward to viewing all your observations.