Make a field guide for your yard or neighborhood
By Janice D. Green
Assassin Bug nymph
Do you love getting out-of-doors? Do you enjoy identifying the plants, insects, and other creatures that you find there? In today’s world where almost everyone has a cell phone with a camera in it, and even the old cell phones we no longer use can still take pictures it is easy for everyone, even children, to take pictures of anything and everything you can find in the yard and neighborhood. And don’t forget your vegetable garden.
Go exploring with your children, grandchildren, or your neighbor’s children and take pictures, lots of pictures. Look for flowers, trees, insects, birds, small animals like rabbits, squirrels, lizards, and maybe even a snake.
Choose a loose-leaf binder to use to organize your field guide, and note the page size. Create a file in your word processing software and set your page size to fit your field guide notebook. Then insert one picture at the top of each page. You can print these pages out now and hand-write the information on them, or keep everything in the computer file until you have finished the pages before printing them out.
Under the pictures, identify the specimens giving both the common name and the scientific name. Then tell what you can about the specimen. Where did you find it? What was it doing? If it is a bird, does it live in your area all year or only in the summer or winter? Tell when a flower blooms and what its seeds are like – especially if it is blooming in your garden – will it make a squash or a fruit? If it is an animal, what does it eat? Where does it live? Why do you like (or not like) it?
With Google and the Internet, you have a world of information right at your fingertips to help you collect the information you need for your field guide. Here are a few websites to help get you started:
All About Birds by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Native Plant Database by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, University of Texas at Austin
What Tree Is That? by the National (US) Arbor Day Foundation
Insect Identification for the Casual Observer
Identify Snakes: A How-to Guide by Alderleaf Wilderness College
Discover Life – IDnature Guides
As you develop your own family field guide, you may decide you want to share it with others online through a blog or a Facebook page. Both are easy to do. I’ve enjoyed blogging with WordPress.com, but there are several blogging platforms that are easy to use. Be sure to send us the link if you publish your field guide as a blog or Facebook page.