Apps For Local Biodiversity And Learning About Your Backyard

Apps for Local Biodiversity and Learning About Your Backyard

I had a few new things come across my feed, so I thought I'd put together a list.

If you have more, please share!

iNaturalist is the big one, of course. Best used if you already know your local flora and fauna

And it's child Seek is perfect for if you are trying to learn. It will identify stuff for you and you can share your observations to iNat to add to the resource pool there.

Wildflowers Search has a bunch of area-specific apps for the Americas. (Like, I have 'Pennsylvania Wildflowers' app. I don't know if it has all of the Americas covered, but it has specific apps for th Canadian provinces and Patagonia for sure). It gives you multiple choice options for color, type of plant, location of leaves, etc, and gives you a list of plants you might be looking at. Covers trees, grass, and other stuff, in addition to wildflowers. Pairs well with iNaturalist, IMO. And gives better 'about this plant' info than Seek.

Merlin is like a mix of Seek and Wildflower Search specifically for birds.

Owls Near Me is a website that runs off of iNat, and lets you see what owls have been spotted near you recently.

Falling Fruit is for urban forages. It lets people list locals of edible plants that can be found in a city. (Or, I assume, a town.) If you do ediable guerilla gardening or have a tree you don't mind folks eating from, you can add it to the map. Or add stuff you find in other places around you. Philly and NYC both have over 6,000 locations tagged. (There are other urban foraging tools, but falling fruit is the only one I've seen that maps worldwide.)

Anyone have other apps to add to the list?