App Of The Day: Seek by iNaturalist - Get Out And Capture Nature
You don’t have to go to special locations to appreciate nature. Seek by iNaturalist is an app designed to help you record and learn about nature in your own backyard. The app identifies your location, and lists the common species in your area to provide a jumping off point. There are species of arachnids, amphibians, birds, fish, fungi, insects, mammals, mollusks, plants and reptiles to find. All you have to do is snap a picture, and the app then marks it off in your collection.
The best part of Seek is the image recognition system to match your photo to a species in the app’s database. The app gives you the choice to take photos, or upload an existing one, and even if the species isn’t perfectly centered or zoomed in, the app normally can identify it. Seek worked accurately in every picture in our testing. You also have the choice to upload a picture of a mule deer to the specific category, or you can simply upload a general photo for the app to identify and categorize on its own. It takes a few seconds for identification, but it’s an effortless process that builds up your collection to help you earn badges. Each species in the app includes an information panel that features photos, descriptions, a map of other spottings, and the best time period to spot. There’s no doubt that it takes incentive to get the full use out of Seek, but the more you put in, the more you can get out.
Seek by iNaturalist (Free, Universal) is a valuable utility to incentive learning about nature and taking photos.