Have you ever been out exploring, saw a neat bug, heard a cool bird song, or smelled a pretty flower, but you didn’t know what it was? Wonder no more! With these nature and wildlife apps at your fingertips you can become an expert Naturalist.
The following apps allow you to be a citizen scientist by helping you identify the world around you and you get to help the organizations and their scientists learn the location of the cool things you find. This data being uploaded across the globe by everyone outdoors helps conservation efforts everywhere!
1. eBird, from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, at Cornell University - https://ebird.org/home
This app helps you record the location of the birds you spot wherever you are, people around the world upload birds to the database daily. You can upload photos and comments about what, where and when you spotted birds. If you’re not quite sure what bird you are looking at or hearing, download Merlin Bird Id and use them at the same time!
2. Merlin Bird ID, from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University - https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
Merlin Bird ID allows you to download a huge database of birds based on your location, you can also load new databases onto your app when you travel to new countries! Using the app you can explore the bird databases for fun, identify birds by call using the Sound ID, upload a photo you took and let Photo ID find the bird for you, or you can Start a bird ID and tell the app what you’ve spotted from the size, colour and location of the bird and it will return a list of possible matches for you to pick from.
3. iNaturalist https://www.inaturalist.org/
iNaturalist is a joint initiative between the California Academy of Science and National Geographic. Similar to eBird, iNaturalist helps people globally identify and record all of the natural life around them from insects and animals, to plants and fungi. iNaturalist makes it easy and fun for all ages to be naturalists, Seek is a kid-safe, family friend app created by iNaturalist.
4. Seek by iNaturalist https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app
Download Seek and explore as a family using your phone camera! Seek lets you scan the environment you are in, and gives you all the information you need to learn about the life around you. You can also complete challenges and earn badges for what you find.
