inaturalist is a citizen science website+app with the goal of documenting biodiversity in your area. it features a large community of bug lovers, botanists, birders, mycologists, mammal fans, and other enthusiasts of the nonhuman world, some of whom are willing to lend a hand in identifying stuff! computer vision-based suggestions give you starting points for possible identification, which is very useful for ecological newbies and adapts alike.
i love this website. it motivates me to go out of the house and explore the world around me. it reminds me of pokemon go, except using it slowly teaches you the names of different species and decreases your alienation from your nonhuman cousins!
if you join, a few things to know:
- you should consider using a burner username+name that you don't use anywhere else & avoid linking it back to your main identity, especially if you use it in your home neighborhood alot, because overtime your public observations form a map of places you frequent.
- additionally, you can mark the location of observations as obscured, or completely private.
- garden plants are good for practicing & learning, but make sure to mark them as captive/cultivated before submitting observations of them. inat is focused on wildlife, and captive critters not tagged as captive mess with the data.
- computer vision is very helpful but should be considered a starting point. you should try to learn how to identify stuff without computers.
- if you aren't sure what species something is, it's a good idea to only identify to genus or family, or whatever you feel confident with.
I love inaturalist! When I first got into it, I went around documenting all the flora and fauna in my backyard, and it became an exciting adventure as new species became apparent throughout the year. Now I'm everybody's go-to for tree insight. The community is quickest to ID chordates, but the app works reasonably well with bugs and plants etc too. Just know that you'll never be able to unlearn how maddeningly dominant invasive species are. 😖