The best nature-focused websites, reviewed by me.
Just as diversity in nature makes ecosystems complex, fascinating, and resilient, a diversity of voices and perspectives makes the world of nature-focused storytelling more vibrant. This is my incomplete, imperfect, work-in-progress list of my favorite nature-focused websites, with notes on what they each offer. I hope to keep adding to it as I review more websites about nature. If you know of a good one I’m missing, get in touch and I’ll be happy to consider adding it!
Nature blogs, narratives, and other first-hand sources
The Music of Nature
Like the Music of Nature Podcast by the same creator, Lang Elliott’s blog delves deeply into the world of natural sounds. Drawing on decades of experience as a naturalist and sound recordist, Lang explores the diversity and beauty of the natural soundscape, that unique signature of a place. Each post includes clips of natural sound from the day in the field.
Plant Diversity by Matt Lavin
Matt Lavin is a Montana, USA-based botanist whose career has focused largely on plants and plant communities within the sagebrush steppe of western North America and within seasonally dry tropical forests. His Plant Diversity site on Flickr, created as a reference for students in Matt’s plant diversity classes, features over 27,000 photos of wild and semi-wild plants. In addition, the captions include valuable first-hand observations of plant communities, ecological patterns, and change over time, as well as identification tips.
The Prairie Ecologist
This blog by Nebraska, USA-based scientist and naturalist Chris Helzer is all about prairies and their diversity: insects, spiders, plants, fire, restoration, change over time, and much more. I greatly admire Chris’ writing because it is entertaining and very readable but also solidly based in years of scientific observation and study. Chris tackles a variety of interesting and complicated topics related to North American prairies and makes them easy to understand, without removing their nuance and complexity. His observations of arthropods alone, complemented by his macro photography, are eye-opening and fascinating. This is an excellent resource for anyone with an interest in prairies, ecology, and/or nature.
Gulo in Nature
Gulo in Nature, the blog of conservation scientist and interpretive naturalist Charles van Rees, is full of posts explaining commonly-asked nature questions, such as what do if you find a baby bird, and lesser-known nature facts, like how certain fall leaf colors may be a way of attracting birds to fruits. Charles’ blog is well-organized, easily searchable, and written in an approachable style that is accessible to anyone. Use this site to expand your knowledge of everything from tropical ecosystems and wetlands to blue jays and pollinators. And be sure to check out the gorgeous artwork on the homepage!
Wild With Nature
In case you’re finding my website for the first time, I’m including Wild With Nature in this list. Through my website, I tell stories of nature that focus on wonder and place-based connection. These stories (there’s a new one every month) have been fully bilingual (English/español) since February 2023. I produce them in written form and also as narrated podcasts in both languages. Topics range from voles and migratory songbirds to place-based portraits of nature, cuckoo wasps, porcupines, and everything in between. I incorporate lots of my photos into these stories, and I’m adding more and more place-based sound recordings to the podcasts.
Wild Echoes
This website, written by Switzerland-based naturalist and sound recordist Chris Hails, profiles over 100 common European birds with a focus on their sounds. The website is richly illustrated with Chris’s sound recordings, the photographs of Arlette Berlie, and the bird illustrations of Frank Jarvis. Each species profile includes information about the bird with thorough attention to its sounds. For European naturalists, this site will prove an excellent resource. Meanwhile, for naturalists in other parts of the world, it provides an informative and inspiring introduction to the intricate world of bird sounds.
Wild Mountain Echoes
Wild Mountain Echoes is another website devoted to celebrating and documenting natural sounds. Created by field biologist Christine Hass, Wild Mountain Echoes shares a fascination for the sound of nature across western North America. Christine’s blog describes her sound recording trips across various habitats and includes lots of impressively high-quality audio clips from these places. As anyone who pays attention to the sounds of nature has noticed, it has become rather difficult to find places free of human-related noises to record sounds, something that Christine highlights in her blog. This website is a great resource for sound recordists and anyone with an interest in the habitats, birds, and/or natural sounds of western North America.
Bug Eric
Eric Eaton is an entomologist and writer with an engaging writing style, a passion for insects, and a scientific attention to detail. If you’re even remotely curious about insects, their diversity, and why they’re important to us (and if you live and breathe on this planet, then you should be!), check out Eric’s blog. Eric shares in-depth observations and information across a wide range of insect groups, debunks myths, and otherwise helps us understand the insects and other invertebrates around us. Although this blog goes deep into the world of insects, it still remains very readable and accessible to a non-expert audience.
BugTracks
This blog takes a deep and fascinating plunge into the world of invertebrates—including insects, spiders, mites, and more—with a particular focus on leafminers and other herbivores that have a close relationship with plants. The author, Charley Eiseman, is a Massachusets, USA-based naturalist who focuses on the New England area of the United States, but the details of insects that he shares here will be relevant and fascinating to naturalists everywhere. The BugTracks blog is heavily based in Charley’s careful, detailed first-hand observations of invertebrates, which means that it’s full of observations that you won’t find anywhere else. This blog is also a great source of inspiration for anyone with a curiosity about insects who is wondering how to observe them and get to know them.
The Forager’s Harvest
This blog by edible wild plants author Sam Thayer hasn’t been updated since 2020, and it only features a few posts… But I’ve included it here because those posts are golden. Sam is one of my favorite nature authors, with a vivid writing style that not only transports you to wild landscapes but also makes you want to get to know the plants and the animals, to develop a relationship with them, to care about them, and perhaps to munch on a few of them as well (the plants, in particular). While I’m recommending Sam’s newsletter, also be sure to check out his books about edible plants (four of them now). These books feature more of the same excellent writing, plus invaluable, thorough first-hand observations that complement an extensive study of the literature on edible plants of temperate North America.
Field Notes
Field Notes is a short (~5 minute), weekly radio program/podcast produced by volunteer naturalists at the Montana Natural History Center. Like Wild With Nature, Field Notes is available as a written narrative and also as a podcast. The stories of Field Notes are written by a variety of naturalists and cover a wide range of topics, ranging from geology to birds to plants. The stories have a geographic focus within Montana, USA, but many of these topics are of broader relevance. These are great short listens or reads when you’re looking for a dose of nature in your day!
Wild Harvests
I found this blog by T. Abe Lloyd, co-author of Wild Berries of Washington and Oregon, years ago while I was studying my undergrad degree and reading everything I could find about ethnobotany. To my regret, Abe hasn’t added new posts since 2021. But in spite of that, this site is still an incredible resource, a rich archive of first-hand stories of foraging and respectful relationships with plants. Abe is based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and most of these stories are based in that region. I especially admire these posts because they blend first-person observation and relationship with a solid botanical background and a review of relevant scientific literature. This is one of those sites that shares an incredible depth of naturalist connection in a very accessible way.
MPG Ranch
The MPG Ranch is a privately-owned ranch in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, USA that conducts a variety of scientific research related to ecology, conservation, and restoration. The website includes readable progress updates and reports from projects focused on bird ecology, restoration, plants, soil ecology, and more.
Spider Collector’s Journal
If you’re looking for a plethora of information on the spiders of Washington state, USA, check out Rod Crawford’s Spider Collector’s Journal! (For an introduction to Rod’s work and the spider diversity he studies, read my story from 2023, Getting to Know Washington’s Spiders.) Rod has spent his career studying the impressive spider diversity of Washington, and his blog features narratives of his collecting trips, illustrated with photo galleries showing spiders, habitats, and other wildlife. Whether or not spiders interest you, it’s worth browsing this site… prepare to be amazed by the diversity of invertebrates around us!
10,000 Things of the Pacific Northwest
Dan Nelson is an adventurous amateur naturalist based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. His website is full of photos and narratives from his naturalist forays in this region, and it also boasts pages profiling various species of insects, plants, and other creatures. In these accounts, Dan’s enthusiasm for nature shines through—as does the bewildering diversity of invertebrates, plants, and other lifeforms in this region. If you think nature is just a few trees and bears, read 10,000 Things of the Pacific Northwest!
Mayuko Fujino’s blog
Mayuko Fujino is an artist who grew up in Japan and lives in the Hudson Valley of New York state, USA. Her remarkable art, inspired by traditional Japanese techniques and the Mingei folk art movement, weaves these traditions with a profound curiosity and respect for the landscape where she lives. Local birds and plants are prominent in her art, along with place-based techniques such as pigments from local rocks and from invasive plants. Mayuko’s matter-of-fact blog chronicles her experiences with art, birds, and nature in the Hudson Valley.
Wildflowers and Weeds
Wildflowers and Weeds is the website of Tom Elpel, a forager, author, and naturalist based in Montana, United States. His website features a variety of photos, essays, and resources related to plant recognition, ecosystems, and foraging in the western United States. His photos of plant families are designed as a companion to his popular plant identification guide, Botany in a Day.
FatherSonBirding
Sneed and Braden Collard are a father and son based in Montana, USA with a passion for birds and nature that they bring with them wherever they go. Their blog (which includes articles written by Sneed and by Braden) features a variety of bird-related adventures. In addition, Sneed is a prolific author, and many of his books feature themes of nature and birds.
Nature-focused databases and references
eBird
eBird is a massive citizen science platform for bird observations across the world. Besides allowing bird enthusiasts to submit observations—and attempting to curate/verify them via a volunteer network of expert reviewers—it also serves as an informational resource for bird distributions, sightings, photos and audio recordings, seasonal patterns, and trends.
Birds of the World
Birds of the World is a scientific database featuring comprehensive reviews of information related to the ecology, behavior, habitat, sounds, migration, etc. of over 11,000 bird species across the world. This is my go-to resource when I want to delve into understanding the ecology of a particular bird. Unfortunately this site, a project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, requires a paid subscription, currently $49/year. If that’s more than you can afford, check whether your local library provides free access. For birds of the United States and Canada, a less-detailed free resource, also provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is All About Birds.
Illinois Wildflowers
This thorough website created by John Hilty includes photos and species profiles of over 800 species of wild plants of Illinois, USA. In additional, it includes information gleaned from the scientific literature about interactions between these plants and insects, birds, mammals, fish, and turtles. Although focused on Illinois, this website is a great resource for identification and ecological information for a variety of plants across the Great Plains and Midwest.
BugGuide
BugGuide is a resource that helps identify insects and other arthropods and educate people about them. Unfortunately for my international readers, the geographic scope of BugGuide is limited to the United States and Canada. Within that scope, this is an excellent resource for learning about insects, spiders, etc. and identifying them from photos (ideally of good quality).
What I especially like about BugGuide is that, while anyone can submit photos and comments, only approved editors or the person submitting an observation can change its identification. Approved editors are professional entomologists and highly skilled amateurs who volunteer countless hours of their time to help identify arthropods on this site. Because of this system, BugGuide is a source of high-quality information about insects and other small creatures with exoskeletons. Identifying these creatures to species from photos is often hard, in many cases impossible… But if you’re trying to learn about insects or identify them through photos, BugGuide is the best online resource I’ve found.
Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria
The Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria is a database of plant distributions in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Based on herbarium specimens—that is, carefully collected and curated museum collections of wild plants laboriously collected by generations of botanists—this is a high-quality resource for information on plant distributions within the area. (Note that, although herbarium specimens are generally a high-quality source of verifiable information about plants, not all of the geographic observation points in this database are precisely mapped.) For many specimens, this database allows you to view a photo of the actual specimen with its collection notes, providing first-hand information that often includes habitat and associated species.
Montana Field Guide
The Montana Field Guide is a resource produced by the Montana Natural Heritage Program that offers information about wildlife, plants, fungi, lichens, and other lifeforms within the state of Montana, USA. Species accounts vary in their completeness, but include valuable information on taxonomy, identification, ecology, habitat, and more.
Fire Effects Information System
The Fire Effects Information System is a US Forest Service database featuring literature reviews of a variety of North American plant species that occur in the United States, with a focus on their relationship with wildfires. I find this a good starting place to find ecological information, habitat considerations, and much more when I’m researching particular North American plants.
Burke Museum Image Collection
This University of Washington website focuses on the flora of Washington state, USA, with species pages profiling over 3,000 vascular plants, 1,000 macrofungi, and 250 lichens with photos. These pages also include distribution maps within the state and, in many cases, brief descriptions of habitat and botanical characteristics.
iNaturalist
iNaturalist is a very popular citizen-science platform that hosts a database where anyone can submit observations of wild lifeforms across the world via photos or audio recordings. Anyone on the platform can propose identifications for observed organisms. iNaturalist also includes an AI tool that suggests identifications based on the submitted media. Once an observation is identified as the same thing by 2 or more people, it becomes “research-grade,” or supposedly a verified observation. iNaturalist is a useful tool for trying to identify creatures if you don’t have other resources, and it’s also useful for connecting with other nature enthusiasts.
As far as accuracy, I have to confess that I’m often skeptical of identifications on iNaturalist. Let’s consider plants, for example. Where I know my plants reasonably well, in Montana, there are certain species, such as ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), that can be identified accurately and reliably from a decent photo. There are other plants, however, such as willows (genus Salix), various asters (genera Symphyotrichum, Erigeron, Eurybia), Indian paintbrushes (genus Castilleja), and many more that are very difficult to identify, even in the field with a hand lens and a botanical manual. Between crowd-sourced identifications and the AI tool, iNaturalist makes it very easy to guess incorrectly at identifications or hurry to put a name on something instead of actually getting to know it. Nevertheless, if you use iNaturalist with this caveat in mind, it can be a valuable source of information.