Diario de xpacifica

The iNaturalist Android app is not accepting the GPS coordinates of many observation photos I've taken over the past couple weeks. I've taken a lot of amazing photos which I can't create observations from. Worse still, the app will not even allow me to manually input the GPS coordinates for observations.

I've covered a lot of territory throughout Marin Headlands over many months. Today I had a spectacular 28+ mile sojourn which took me along the Alta Trail, down the Marincello trail to Tennessee Valley, then up the Wolf Ridge trail which connected to the Coastal Trail. The upper Wolf Ridge trail is spectacular.

I saw hazelnut (abundant along some parts of the trail and extremely rare throughout the rest of the Headlands), Monardella, an unusual yellow-flowered paintbrush, a Ceanothus with blossoms, Clinopodium douglasii (Yerba Buena, the only time I've ever seen in in the Headlands), and some other species not being IDed by iNaturalist that I haven't seen before.

This area is a botanical hot-spot and has probably been mostly undisturbed for centuries or millenia.

Wish I could at least post the pics here since I can't create observations in the iNaturalist Android app due to the location issue.

Today I saw another Monardella in blossom in Marin Headlands. I've seen three in the past week - on Wolf's Ridge Trail, on the Alta Trail, and today on the Coastal Trail west of the roundabout on Conzelman Rd.

Today's Monardella was growing mostly underneath a sagebrush plant. It's cool to see how native plants can live happily together, compared with segments that are covered with invasive ivy that smothers everything.

I also saw an interesting Stachys today. The odor of the leaves was not as sharp as the more common Stachys that occurs throughout Marin Headlands.

Along the Coastal Trail segment there is also a lot of what I think are native Rubus and they are in fruit now.

Also saw another slug moving along the trail. It always worries me because a lot of bikers go through there. I stood there to protect him when one bike went through and then picked him up and placed him on a leaf along the side of the trail. I feel bad to have traumatized the poor little guy.

The iNaturalist Android app is still not not using the GPS coordinates embedded in photos. In the past, whenever a photo was "shared" with iNaturalist it would open a new observation in iNaturalist and use the embedded GPS coordinates in the photo for the location of the observation.

As of some weeks ago this stopped working, and when a photo is now shared with iNaturalist and a new observation is created, instead of using the photo's embedded GPS data, it automatically sets the location to my current location.

However, I almost never create observation in the field. It takes a lot of time and also my eyesight is not the greatest and I cannot view the screen of the phone in clear detail while in the field. I create all the observations when I'm at home when I can wear glasses and go through the photos to determine which ones to use. I use a gallery app and share the photos with iNaturalist, however that means the location gets automatically set to my home location.

I just double-checked - a recent photo of an Eriogonum I made yesterday on the Coastal Trail in Sausalito has the embedded coordinates of 37.83464,-122.4977, altitude 138.0m. I'm able to view the exact coordinate location in a map application like MAPS.ME and the coordinates are correct.

The workaround is that I have to enter the text "Coastal Tr" and it will show autocomplete suggestions for the approximate location, however it is not very accurate - it can be a mile away from the actual observation location.

I noticed that iNaturalist was updated a couple days ago however that update has apparently not fixed the bug.

Someone suggested that I use the web interface to manually input coordinates from photos - however that would entail a lot of extra work and with the amount of observations I make I do not have the time it would require.

Went on the new route - SCA trail (starting at Conzelman) -> Alta Trail -> Orchard Fire Rd. today, which I first discovered last week, and saw several Monardellas and also a couple patches of Clarkia rubicunda which is the first time I've ever seen these.

The Triteleia laxa blossoms are really winding down now - only saw a few along segments of trail that were full of them only a couple weeks ago. Stachys are also really winding down with only a few scattered blossoms.

Along the Alta trail there are a lot of Rubus berries in fruit. I keep seeing what looks like areas with Corylus, Rubus, and Holodiscus mixed together in Marin Headlands on partially shaded hillsides.

Because of the Monardellas, out of curiousity I've gone by the area on Conzelman that heads under the GG bridge a couple times to check where I observed patches of Mentha pulegium late last year but haven't seen any. So even though they are also mints they are very distinct with their own season.

Have been uploading observations from today and the iNaturalist Android app correctly recognized the GPS from photos for a few but failed again with photos from the Corylus and later observations on the Alta trail.

People have suggested ways to edit the observations to include the correct GPS info. I take dozens of photos on my hike/rides and don't have time to do that kind of detailed editing to every observation, but would be happy to delegate editing capability to my observations for anyone interested.