Using phone apps to learn to love nature in suburbia

This post will suggest a few phone apps that can help you to discover the beauty and wonder of the natural world right on your suburban home’s doorstep.

Why it matters: Sir David Attenborough said “No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they haven’t experienced.” As important as it is to be aware of the environmental emergencies all around is, it is equally important to cultivate a sense of wonder about and love for the world that sustains us.

The inspiration behind this post comes from Kelly Brenner’s book, Nature Obscura: A city’s hidden natural world. Following the David Attenborough quote, she goes on to say, “Experiences in nature need to take place where people are in cities…” and explains that, “Wildlife in cities is amazingly diverse, with strange and unknown creatures that live almost completely unseen.” (I recommend browsing Kelly’s website, www.metrofieldguide.com. Her writing about nature is evocative and memorable to me in the same way that Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us was. It’s gorgeous writing that demonstrates a love and curiosity for the natural world that has been inspirational to me as I cultivate the same kind of love and curiosity about my own suburban yard.)

I’ll point you towards three apps that help keep me interested and curious about my yard, and have provided the impetus for me to keep working hard to improve the habitat that my yard provides. I’ll also caution you that I know I don’t use these apps to their full potential, so my descriptions are probably incomplete!

Merlin Bird ID, merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

In my experience, this app creates an immediate and strong connection to a world that, seconds before, the user did not know existed. I mainly use the bird song identification feature, and will leave it on as I take walks around the neighborhood. I can walk to different areas in my neighborhood and find birds that don’t visit my yard, which helps me to notice more about what’s different in that area. I’ll walk a half mile to a forested park area and find completely different bird populations. When I visited the Florida Everglades, I used it to further enrich my experience.

The screenshots below show the number of birds I heard over 43 seconds on July 24th in my backyard. Once recorded, you can go back and listen to the individual bird calls, and click on particular birds to learn more about them.

During bird migration time in the spring and fall, you can watch the Birdcast Migration Dashboard to get a sense of the migration phenomenon. Absolutely incredible!!

Picture This, www.picturethisai.com/

This is one that I actually pay for (I think $20/year) because I find it so invaluable. Sometimes, I’m just not sure what plant is growing up in my garden and whether or not I should keep it. This app, unlike the free feature that you can use on your iPhone, is almost never wrong. I also use it when I’m on walks and I see a plant that I don’t recognize or which strikes me as interesting for some reason.

You can get pretty good plant descriptions, and I like that there’s often a poem associated with a plant. It reminds me of how connected humans are to plants, which, in turn, creates a sense of appreciation for both the plant and our knowledge of them.

iNaturalist, www.inaturalist.org/

Mostly, I use iNaturalist to create a log of the insects and small wildlife, like frogs, that I find in my yard. I like that other people will review them and either confirm my identification or make corrections. This is an app that I’d like to make stronger use of because I like that it connects me to both people and wildlife.

All right, that’s it! Please share any apps or resources that have helped you to love suburban nature!