Diario de theresephillips

For plants, it would be useful to have pictures of the leaves, stalks or stems especially with leaves format on the stem and the flower layout on the stem, seeds, and the flowers up close for identifying. For the habitat and to see if it is cultivated, it would also be helpful to have a wide-angle picture and it is also beneficial to have a picture of the whole plant. If you want to add anything else, please leave a comment.

I wanted to add a comment for bryozoan observations. I am not a professional bryozoan identifier but I have read up on some of the species found in Washington state and would like to say some important photo advice to add in on observations of any bryozoan species. First off, a picture of the whole bryozoan colony and to show where the settlement is attached on will help with the basic understanding of which species to include and exclude from the possible species. An example of this would be kelp lace bryozoan is the main species to be found on kelp. The next photos should be taken with a macro lens view. For phones, you can use a phone macro lens which is my preferred method of capturing these photos that take of small specimens. Make sure to have the clear view of the individual borders of the individual bryozoans. This helps with identifying the species with their own unique patterns, such as the kelp lace bryozoan which is my only and primary subject as in writing this post and is easily confused with other white patterned bryozoan without the macro view of the colony pattern. I hope this will help with making your bryozoan observations posts to be more accurate and specific as much as possible.

For limpets, it is beneficial to get shots of the top and bottom and the sideview. The top and bottom shows the patterns while the sideview shows the shape of the limpet. I know this is a small post but if you have anything else to add, please do!

Super late writing and posting this post since this trip was in early September. Anyways, on our trip, we went to the coast of Oregon near Cannon Beach. We stayed at Manzanita and spend most of our time there. Found lots of marine life when I came out on the beach at low tide and there was a huge rock with tons and tons of barnacles and sea anemones mostly. We have been to this beach many times before and never been to came down when it was that low tide. I remember seeing so many sea dollars at the beach in the early days of visiting the beach but we only founds one or two sand dollars our last and more recent trips only which was sad and makes me wonder why. I also remember one trip we saw a bunch of man of sail jellies (I think) one trip and that trip only. Back to this trip, we also visited Cannon Beach, Seaside, and Short Sand Beach and trails. When we visited Seaside, we went to church, went to lunch somewhere I do not remember, and went to the beach for a small bit but did not see much as I remember. Next, me and my dad visited Short Sand trail and beach. I going to talk about the observations that I found on the trails on the way to and back to the beach. I found lots of mushrooms on the trail which was super fun since it was the most new fungi that found at once at the time. Next is the beach where I did not found anything except for a good size and in a perfect shape purple olive snail shell which I took back to my mom as she requested me to bring her a shell from the beach. Short Sand trails was my favorite part of the entire beach and then Manzanita beach. On the way back home, we stopped at Cannon Beach to wrap up the trip and I did not find much since the tide pools were lowkey off limits and it was super busy per usual. On the road back, I took two observations out of my window of some trees and such. Trip, overall, was super fun and Manzanita in general, is my favorite place in Oregon since I took my first steps on the beach (a little fun fact about me)! Looking forward to next time!

These are my guidelines that I have written down for my personal use to keep myself responsible and accountable! Feel free to use them as well!

• Focus on marine life observations
• Focus on plant identifications
• Focus on species until familiar
• Read the pages and research on web before identifying a observations that I’m not confident on
• Only agree with identifications that I’m very confident in
• Learn from others and ask questions
• Read identification books and websites
• Go on field trips often
• Take picture first and post later afterwards (preferably with camera)
• Take pictures of all angles possible and all important parts of plants or animals to identify
• Mark if the plant is planted as cultivated
• If many plants are in the photo, mark the desired plant
• Only do IDs that I’m confident in when tired and need to slow down
• Keep cryptic species at the genus level

will keep this updated with new guidelines as I come up with them as best as I can

About my beach trip in the afternoon, I went to the old beach since my phone died quickly, and I was looking through the beach too slowly. lol. Found quite a few limpets and my fav shell find at the beach was Purple Olive Snail (Olivella biplicata) and also Oyster-Thief (Colpomenia peregrina) was unknown until today which was cool! Went in the bushes too to find bull thistles (Cirsium vulgare) along with a special bee! However I did find quite alot today! Also went slow back home because I found lots of insects (stink bugs) in a bush on the way back which was my fav part of the trip!

Today, after I went to the beach, I decided to sort through all my seashells, rocks, and other natural objects within my nature collection. I do plan on getting rid of some through returning to nature (to the beach and in the garden). I decide to identify the shells since it's a passion of mine to bring curiosity in daily life. I have soo much fun using Seek and iNaturalist as a form as identification and read books about identifications of the natural world!

Since I have returned home for summer break, I had not been to the beaches near mt house yet. Thus, I decided to take a long roundabout walking trip to all three beaches this morning. The tide was medium to high, so I couldn't go far on the middle beach in between Iver's and the hotel nor did I had the chance to check out under the rocks for live crabs and sorts. However, I did finds lots of plants and dead crabs remains as well as birds imported from ebird, which the list can be found under my bird list in the lists. It was nice to visit the hometown beaches again, although was cloudy and humid, looking forward to more visits when the tide is lower.

Here I am going to add my list of resources that I have found and as well as given to me by some very helpful people from iNaturalist for other people to use as well! If you have more resources that I need to check out as well, please add them to the comment section as well! I am still a beginner IDer so anything helps! Will keep this list updated

https://www.whaleresearch.com/idapp
https://oceana.org/marine-life/
https://nwwildflowers.com/compare/
https://burkeherbarium.org/imagecollection/
https://burkeherbarium.org/waflora/checklist.php
https://www.wnps.org/northeast-washington
https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/
https://www.insectidentification.org/
https://bugguide.net/node/view/15740

Here is my bird life list link:
https://www.inaturalist.org/lists/4459919-Birds-Lifelist?page=1&view=photo

I have complied all my birds listed from my bird life list from ebird and Merlin Bird ID. I update my list on a somewhat regular basis. Currently the list shows 67 species but on my Merlin Bird ID list, I have 68 species. I plan on correcting this mistake soon! (EDIT: The list is now corrected to the full 68 species! Was missing Wilson's Warbler.) The list currently has species primarily from Pacific Northwest Washington, but I do have some species from the Midwest from a trip from visiting family and I am also going on a trip to New Mexico this August.

I have included all my iNaturalist bird observations since 5/31/2024 of the date of this journal post was posted on this post as well to check out!