Holiday snaps IDs

I am very much a learner in this community and hope to continue to learn, in spite of the changes we’ve had on iSpot.

I occasionally take pics of plants or insects while on holiday - husband is not quite as interested, though. I have had helpful responses from iSpotters re sightings on our wonderful Scottish islands and in the Highlands. But when I post photos of sightings in France, almost no-one responds since they come up as global rather than home community of course. Is there any way to try to elicit responses from those in S England, say, for spots in northern France? Or should I make a small collection of sightings from the geographical area of the trip as a project?

Most recently, I may have seen two cockroaches and a centaury plant in Brittany, but no confirmations or alternative IDs as yet.

I don’t think so. Now you can save observation filters I’d hoped it might be easier for a few people to find ways of doing these ‘near’ records. On the old iSpot you were basically stuck with doing the whole of the world (apart from Southern Africa and the UK) when you ventured out of the UK ‘community’.

If there were a way to draw a polygon on the ‘global’ map and only see records from in it and then save that filter it might encourage people to do records from near their area of expertise. But at the moment that feature is not there - perhaps in a future update.

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I have a project for plants outside the major areas of South Africa (Cape) and UK where there are few experts:
https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/chile/view/project/485049/other-areas-plants

It’s not precise as hand drawn with iSpot’s idiosyncrasies. But I do look at most of the observations that appear here. I’m afraid I’m no expert and I did not think I could contribute much to an id’d Centaurium. But a plant without ID I will try to help with.

Recently there has not seemed much point as there were no notifications. Now we have some feedback I will be more active.

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I am (or was) set up to see all Holarctic plant observations, but there’s two problems. Firstly, the performance issues mean that I’m missing observations as they scroll off the carousel. Secondly, the particular plant was obviously a Centaurium, but I’m reluctant to positively identify it as Centaurium erythraea outside of a British context,

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Set up a project for ‘France’ and then ‘advertise’ it on the Forum (there is a Forum page for Projects, I believe) and then we will all chip in. I can probably cope as far south as the Loire, at any rate!

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Thanks for this, helpful as always!

Thanks for your feedback, helpful. I may even have ‘liked’ these comments.

Thanks for taking the time. Your project has lots in it. I see I should be figuring out how to do a single reply…

Useful thought. Thanks for taking time to reply.

The two ‘cockroaches’ : one is a garden cockroach Ectobius vinzi, while the other is a juvenile Gryllus campestris looking for a spot to spend winter, according to my new friends on https://insecte.org.