Great egret

Thank you Malcolm for being specific. Having read the FAQ section I'd suggest you change the wording to say that it's not OK to submit blurry or poor quality photos. You might also want to clue people in on the tutorial as well if all spottings are contingent on high resolution photos. All things considered I must say Noah is much better for logging data than Cornell's Wild Lab.

Actually, Lars, the point is that the vast majority of natural history journaling has been accomplished without high resolution photography. I would suggest that you try engaging Project Noah contributors to explain and qualify their identifications, like asking my what markings or specific indicators might distinguish the two species I'm reporting. I have a whole file full of plant and soil identifications which are logged with the US Army Corps of Engineers and various municipal governments which are already accepted as valid without one single photo. That data can be brought into court as admissable evidence to influence million dollar lawsuits which could even decide major civil engineering projects. You might also expand the potential data input to detail physiology and markings if you are really serious about validating sightings. Otherwise, you're more likely to alienate casual contributors and greatly reduce your overall data collection by an order of magnitude.

Your app is an iPhone app so I am obviously using my iPhone to capture most of my sightings. The iPhone camera has about a 15 yard range with decent visibility, therefore most postings from iPhone users will not be clear or for that matter very objective for verification. Where possible I upload camera shots from the internet website which allows me to post higher resolution pictures. From my experience doing environmental fieldwork, getting good high resolution pictures of wildlife sightings is a small percentage of all sightings.