Now is a great time to learn something about your own back yard, while you’re social distancing at home. Since there is no yeast to be had, instead of baking bread, meet the flora and fauna in your garden. Since fall I’ve been working on learning wildflowers, or weeds to some of you. But if you’re not into weeds, choose birds, trees, or insects.
Research has shown that when we know the name of the animals and plants we come across we tend to be more connected to them. In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer says “Names are a way we humans build relationships, not only with each other but with the living world.” Not knowing “would be a little scary and disorienting–like being lost in a foreign city where you can’t read the street signs.”
The easiest way to start is just get curious. We have all the knowledge of the world in our back pockets. Think about that. With an app called Pl@ntNet I can identify a plant I’ve seen all my life but never learned the name of. Snap a photo, choose an identifying part: leaf, flower, fruit or bark, and almost instantly the common and botanical names pop up along with hundreds of other photos of it. It’s fantastic. And it works for trees too!
This week on a walk in the woods I found Virginia spring beauties (Claytonia virginica), and Woods Anemones (Anemone quinquefolia). From the road, the flowers are almost the same. It’s the leaves that give them away. Snap, snap, just to confirm my ID. The spring beauties have a grass like leaf while the anemones have a whorl of three heavily dissected leaves, a bit like poison ivy.
Left: Virginia Spring Beauties, Right: Woods Anemones
Then I come across an emerging leaf I’m not familiar with. Snap. Maianthemum canadense. I’d never recognize it from this tiny leaf; I only recognize it in flower, Canada mayflower or sometimes False Lily-of-the-Valley. With a super cool fall fruit. Now I know it’s spring look.
I’ve got a great wildflower book, two in fact, but mostly I use my phone app. Pl@ntNet is a free app, it’s part of a larger citizen science project so if you share your photos when using it, you are helping scientists, researchers, and conservationists use this crowdsourced data to look at climate change, migration patterns, and to monitor species and sensitive ecosystems. If you love this app like I do, consider making a donation to the organization.
You know the chickadees and cardinals at your backyard feeder but do you know that slate colored cutie with a white belly? Probably a Dark-eyed Junco. Another free app, Audubon Bird guide: North America, will help you identify the birds at your feeder and also let you hear their calls. You just punch in size, color, then type, and photos of possible birds keep narrowing the choices until you see the one you are looking for.
A hawk I saw recently in my back yard had a reddish belly and I assumed it was a red tail hawk. With this app I was able to identify it as a Cooper’s Hawk, and listened to its call. The app then showed me a map of recent sightings in my area. Very cool. It’s also got a built in field guide so you can study up from the comfort of your own couch. I love this because it’s so easy to use and I almost always come up with the right bird.
Last week I took a photo of an unusual bee feeding from a quince. When I got home and did some research to ID it I found out it was actually a Drone Fly. Yes, even a bee-keeper makes mistakes. The cool thing I discovered as an easy way to distinguish bees from flies is that bees have 4 wings and when landed keep them folded over their backs, while flies have only 2 wings and tend to keep them splayed out while feeding.
Bee on the left, Drone Fly on the right
I should have just used my InsectID app. A quick analysis of the photo I took and InsectID named it in seconds! Unlike the other two apps, this one costs $39.99 per year. I like it for its simplicity. Alternatively, you could get iNaturalist for free and become a citizen scientist with it.
If you are like me, and will lose that name quicker than your walk back indoors, try your hand at a sketchbook. Get a small spiral bound sketchbook to draw in. The act of drawing forces you to really study your subject and will help you remember it later. I’ve recently begun a weed sketchbook and besides the drawings I add notes to the margins.
When you’re finally back at a barbecue later this year you will impress your friends by knowing the trees in your yard, birds at your feeder and even the weeds under your feet.