Smart phones and nature aren't often seen as companions, but according to Nature Nanaimo there's plenty of apps available for anyone who loves wildlife to learn more about their natural surroundings.
"It's one of the reasons actually a lot of naturalists now don't use field guide books as much anymore just because you don't need to have a book and flip through the pages, you can just post it to iNaturalist and find out what it is pretty quickly," said Doug Fraser, president of Nature Nanaimo.
"You have almost an unlimited database. A field guide, like a field guide of the birds of western North America, has one picture of each bird or a few pictures or drawings of each bird, but you don't have an internet's worth of data on every single species of birds."
There are four apps that Fraser recommends.
1. Merlin
Developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in Merlin, users can record bird calls and the app will identify the species in real time, even if the user doesn't have internet access. If someone is lucky enough to get a clear photo of the bird, it can also be used for identification with the Photo ID mode which offers a short list of potential matches.
"As I'm walking through the woods I think, 'OK, maybe I didn't see a MacGillivray's warbler but I know it was there,'" Fraser said. "So that's cool. In this wetland or forest that I just walked through, I know I was completely surrounded by this rich diversity of wildlife, which maybe I didn't get to see but at least I know it's there."
Fraser said that one benefit of the app is the ability to notice birds that otherwise might not be recognized.
"I think for a lot of people we don't realize how many very beautiful little birds we have. I think of the common yellow throat, which is common, it is a spectacular looking little bird, but it's almost never seen."
Additionally, the more a person uses Merlin, the more they learn the distinct sounds of the different species.
"It creates a little list of all the birds around me singing, so you go, 'that's the flycatcher's call' and then you start to learn it because Merlin is telling you what it is."
More information can be found at http://merlin.allaboutbirds.org.
2. eBird
Merlin is great for identifying birds, but for birders with an interest in contributing citizen science, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology manages eBird.
With eBird, users can participate in the collection of data including species distribution, abundance, habitat use and trends.
Fraser said many experienced birders are likely already familiar with the app.
"What birders do is they'll go out bird watching and then they'll submit their list of what they saw to eBird. It could be one bird, if you see one bird you can submit it to eBird as an observation, or you could go out to Buttertubs, do a walk around and then submit a list of 24 species we saw this morning at Buttertubs. You can include photos and audio recordings if you want, but you don't have to – you can just record what you saw."
Using the app, users can also look up specific places, like Beban Park or Buttertubs Marsh and see a list of what birds were spotted there during specific time frames.
"Or I could say I want to look up the Brant goose and just see all of the Brant goose observations and they show up on a map."
In early May, Fraser had two friends visiting from Ontario who wanted to see a MacGillivray's warbler. Using the app, Fraser was able to find recent sightings of the bird just off Extension Road.
"We drive to that exact location, we get out of the car and of course the first bird we hear is the MacGillivray's warbler. We snooped around, and sure enough we were able to see it."
More information can be found at http://ebird.org.
3. iNaturalist
iNaturalist is the go-to app for citizen science.
With iNaturalist, people can take photos or sound recordings of animals, fungi and plants, then upload them to the app which uses crowd sourcing to identify the images. With the location tagged of the images posted, it gives researchers information on local animal and plant populations.
"Let's say there's some researcher out there who is researching the distrubution and reproductive activity of moon snails, so they go and they just use this database and look for moon snail data," Fraser said. "They scrutinize it and they'll use it as information for their research."
The Yellow Point Ecological Society uses the app in its annual BioBlitz event, in which residents compete to for prizes based on the results of their posted observations. Nicola Toxopeus, a board member with the ecological society, previously told the News Bulletin that she uses it personally to see where invasive Scotch broom is in Holland Creek Park.
“There are thousands of researchers who are using the data on iNaturalist to analyze what is happening in the environment," Toxopeus said. "I personally use it because I’m very interested in protecting special places."
More information can be found at http://inaturalist.org.
4. Seek by iNaturalist
For those who don't care for contributing but want an easy identification, there's Seek by iNaturalist.
"It's basically the same as iNaturalist but it's intended to be an app to help people identify things as opposed to a citizen science app for submitting observations," Fraser said. "If people really just want to find out what things are and not get too detailed, you might want to use Seek."
Using iNaturalist's catalogue of data, the app will use image recognition technology to help identify any pictured plants or animals. It also provides lists of local commonly recorded insects, birds, plants and amphibians.
More information can be found at http://inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app.
