October themes
Two themes have come up for October so far: sound observations, and harvest time.
I’ve always “followed my ears” to find birds, and with bird alarm calls, their predators (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/27187839). Since the Covid-19 lockdown the world has become a quieter place and sounds have become even more noticeable. Once you’ve figured out the technical issues, I promise sound observations will become a valuable and very enjoyable tool to observe wildlife.
How to upload sound to iNat: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#sounds
: "You can add sounds by dragging wav, mp3, or m4a format sound files into the uploader on iNaturalist, in the same way you upload photos."
You can use your cell phone or the movie function on your camera to record sound.
Here's how I do it:
- I turn the dial on my Canon camera to the record movie function.
- I place the camera as close to the sound source as possible, on a rock, on the ground, on my backpack, to avoid picking up sound created by handling the camera.
- I hit the record button to start and stop the recording.
At home, I download the movie file (.MOV) along with the picture files. I'm on Macintosh, so the rest is for Mac users.
- I open the .MOV file in Quicktime (look for it in your applications), and via ->file, ->export as, export it as audio only, which creates an .m4a file.
- I open the .m4a file in Quicktime and edit it via ->edit, ->trim. Just drag the orange bar to enclose the portion you want to use, and hit trim.
- Save it.
- I upload the m4a sound file to iNat exactly like a photo. Please note, meta data is lost, so you have to go back to your .MOV file for date and time and put that as well as location infos into iNat manually. Hit the calendar for the date, then click on the little clock icon below the date window for the time.
Kim is on Windows, and she provided these steps:
"I use my android phone or Nikon camera to record a movie.
I convert it to .wav using https://online-audio-converter.com/
Click on upload file.
Select .wav
Hit convert
Save on my computer
Upload to iNat."
The Harvest theme:
This is the time of the year when many plants are fruiting and although the colorful flowers are gone, the seeds they produce are just as beautiful. Trees and shrubs carry berries, nuts, acorns, etc. which provide food for animals. Here are a few examples:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60415426
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/59824606
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/59824130
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/59574298
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/59383144
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/60415947
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/59312889
Plus, animals eating seeds/berries/acorns etc. make for great obs too. There's a related project for birds, https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/california-birds-and-the-plants-they-love, run by a VERY dedicated birder, https://www.inaturalist.org/users/1650762. I'd be nice to add to that.
Comentarios
I've successfully uploaded two, very poor, recordings for our October theme. It turns out that even though I hear the freeway as white noise, the phone audio picks it up very well and that sound takes away from the animal sounds far too much :)
Good morning all,
I finally heard an owl in the wee hours and managed to get a mediocre recording to upload, but the darn freeway din is very much in the background :(
And, it is nearing the end of October and time to generate November theme ideas. Fungi came to mind for me, especially as Tracy found a stinkhorn, something I'd very much like to find as well. But I also thought about going back to one of our original themes - females of a species. Chime in with thoughts.
Lastly, what, if any, regular camera maintenance do you do yourselves or take into a shop?
Hope you are all staying safe and healthy.
Hi Laura, your GHO sounded like a male... faint, but audible!!
As to the mushroom theme -- if we were on the East Coast or in Western Europe, we'd have a blast with this. In our parched SoCal, I'd think it's a challenge to find many mushrooms this time of the year. But I'm all for challenges... Has anyone tips where to go? I think we should also recap how to photograph them so they can be ID-ed. I've seen an iNat video with great explanations and suggestions, like take a knife and cut them in half, etc. If we decide on this theme, I'll look for it.
As to camera maintenance, I clean the lens filter, but that's about it. Let's google this!!
Hugs to all,
andrea
We can certainly leave the mushroom idea for another month later in winter. I brought it up because Tracy had found the stinkhorn and I had noticed two lawn mushrooms and one other in my yard this week. I suspect that with our change of weather and no change to irrigation, this might have hastened a couple of mushrooms to venture out during a time when it is not expected.
Heard the owl again last night, but didn't try to record it again as the freeway noise was overshadowing his calls :)
And, I tried a few lame attempts at searching about camera maintenance and found wildly conflicting suggestions, hence my question to you all. Alas, I may have to call Woodland Hills Camera.
Stay safe, big hugs, and sending out good vibes for no fires during this wind (or any time).
I went briefly to King Gillette hoping it would be a bit less windy since it's lower elevation, but it was stormy there as well. Not as bad as up here, but the wind was strong enough to blow over the Halloween decorations. The soil is so dry, there's an incredible amount of dust in the air. Face mask came handy once again, but my eyes are quite itchy. I saw some of the winter ducks that must have arrived very recently -- Wigeons, and a single male Hooded Merganser. There are a few clean-up crews on the road because tree limbs are down, and we all got red flag warnings because this is potentially a really bad day should a fire break out. I'm hunkering down now, with a hot soup, hot tea... It's 56F!!
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