The Everyday Naturalist

A Toolkit for Nature Nerds

One of my best moments ever was when I got to add a bird to my life list and impress a guy at the same time.

Okay, so the guy was my longtime partner, who’s impressed by everything I do, and he once told me, “I need a life list of animals I’ve looked up on Google Image Search because you told me you saw one in the wild.” But I really did outdo myself this time. We were out on a chilly March day near Echo, Oregon, tracing the ruts left by wagons on the Oregon Trail. Small flushes of greenery were just starting to emerge beneath miles of twisted, pungent sagebrush scrub, and we stopped every so often to watch large black darkling beetles trundle across our path. They—and one pile of dried-up coyote scat—looked to be our only wildlife sightings for the day.

That was, until a flash of feathers snapped my attention to the northwest. Forty yards off and flying away fast was a towhee-sized bird; even at that distance, I could see its grayish-brown back and the white belly flecked with an abundance of brown spots. But it was the bill that I noticed the most: slender and longer than that of a thrush, with a slight curve. It was not so large as the one on the brown thrasher I had seen near my parents’ place in Missouri the year before, and it lacked that bird’s russet tones. The overall giss, though, indicated “thrasher.”

The bird quickly winged its way low over the scrub before it disappeared into the sea of sage. All told, I had it in view for about three seconds. But it was enough to trigger memories of pictures I’d seen while paging through countless field guides and articles. In this area, at this time of year, there was only one bird it could be.

“Sage thrasher!” I yelled to my partner, pointing where it had gone. “My first one!”

He was momentarily incredulous. “You’re kidding. You’ve never seen one in person before?”

“I am absolutely certain of it.” I giddily recited the traits that pointed toward my identification.

He shook his head and grinned. After more than a decade together, he was used to me getting distracted every five feet so I could pin an identification on some animal, plant, or fungus I’d seen. But this was proof I’d leveled up: I’d nailed down my unidentified flying object with mere seconds of observation time, at a distance, and with no prior in-person experience with this species.

I did, of course, verify my identification once we got back to the car, pulling out field guides and checking websites of the National Audubon Society, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and other well-respected sources. I checked iNaturalist to see if anyone else had seen sage thrashers here this early in the year, since they are in the Pacific Northwest only for the breeding season. I looked up similar species that might be found in this location at this time, and none were as close a match with the bird I saw. Everything still pointed to my encounter as seeing one of the earliest sage thrashers to return to Oregon for the breeding season. I’m always open to the possibility that I am wrong no matter how solid my research is, but for now, I’m certain enough that I added the sage thrasher to my life list, thanks to that encounter.

Being able to identify a bird at fifty paces may seem like a small accomplishment, but for me it was a major milestone on a dedicated path that I’ve been exploring for the better part of two decades. I’ve always been a giant nature nerd ever since I was big enough to toddle around the yard. But when I left behind the Ozark oak-hickory forests in my twenties and landed in the coniferous Pacific Northwest, I realized I was in unfamiliar territory.

I countered my disorientation by learning the unknown species around me. At first, it was just a few each time I went hiking, but as the years went on, my quest intensified. I purchased stacks of field guides and scoured websites, and when I was introduced to iNaturalist as part of a citizen science project, I added electronic apps to my toolkit.

And now I’m handing that toolkit over to you. Whether you are a seasoned naturalist or just starting to learn the species around you, I want you to feel more confident in your ability to positively identify a new-to-you species. You aren’t required to have a degree in the natural sciences to do this, either. The Everyday Naturalist is full of techniques and tools that anyone can use, both to learn about your neighborhood nature and when traveling to exciting new ecosystems.

In an age where there’s an app for (almost) everything and AI seems poised to replace everyone, it may be tempting to just download PictureThis or Google Lens and be done with it. But these are only tools and imperfect ones at that. If you’re going to be really good at nature identification, you need to also develop the critical thinking skills necessary to determine whether the tool you’re using is giving you an accurate ID or not.

That’s why this book takes my entire identification process and breaks it down into components that are easy to understand and use. I start by explaining the benefits of being able to identify the nature around you, and why it’s important to take your time and be thorough. A chapter on the Western naturalist tradition (as one of many naturalist traditions throughout history and around the world) offers more context for why we categorize and learn about living beings the way we do. Then we get into the nuts and bolts of what you’ll need to get started with identification and why these tools are useful, from field guides and apps full of species to peruse to other practical tools like binoculars, hand lenses, and the best vessels to carry specimens home for study.

After that, it’s time to discuss what you need to pay attention to when you’re identifying an unknown organism. Individual chapters about identifying animals, plants, and fungi go into more detail about what sets each of these kingdoms apart from one another. A few organisms, like lichens and slime molds, don’t fit into these categories so easily, so they get a chapter all their own. Detailed case studies based on my own experiences with various species demonstrate how to use all these traits to identify sample species across multiple kingdoms, and Recommended Resources on page 257 offer suggestions for further reading and resources. A glossary on page 252 defines some of the specialized terms I’ve used throughout the book. To view the various books, websites, and sources I used when writing this book, check out my bibliography at rebeccalexa.com/bibliography. And finally, I’ve created some templates that you can copy and take into the field with you (see pages 246–251). These act as a checklist for all the traits I talk about in the book and make taking notes easier, too.

While I wrote this book to be loosely based on the structure of my two-day Nature Identification for the Everyday Naturalist class, you’re welcome to read it in whatever order you like. If the first two chapters on theory and context just don’t interest you, for example, feel free to jump ahead to the identification chapters. Or let’s say you bought this mainly to help you improve your mushroom identification chops—no one’s stopping you from starting with the chapter on fungi. I do recommend eventually getting around to reading the whole book, even if it isn’t in order.

Just like any other book, this one is also only a tool, and its effectiveness is going to depend on how carefully you use the material within to improve your observation and critical thinking skills. My advice for you is this: Be patient. Don’t rush things. Your goal should be as solid an identification as possible, whether that is down to the species level or not, and that can take time. The more you practice nature identification, the better you’ll get, and every organism you meet is a chance to put your skills to work.

So, let’s get started!