Here are a few resources to explore that can help you get more engaged in nature.
American Birding Conservancy (ABC)
The ABC has a couple of PDFs that folks can use to help them get involved with birding or even to participate for prizes. You can learn more here and download the rules and birding bingo sheets.
Birda
Birda is a great idea. It’s a birding app that connects curious people within a nature-centric, online community. Learning more about the natural world and sharing your findings with a community of likeminded folks is a really good place to start help folks value the biodiversity that we have. And begin to protect it, too.
Bumble Bee Watch
Bumble Bee Watch is a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees. This community science project allows for individuals to upload sightings, ID bumble bees and learn more about bumble bee’s ecology, and conservation efforts.
Montana eBird
eBird is an app, a website, and a community of devoted birders. As an eBird member, you can participate in citizen science by recording your avian observations anywhere in the world. eBird is a free app.
Geolex
Geolex is a private company that provides professional geologic, geophysical, and hydrologic services to industry, individuals, and legal professionals throughout Montana. It also has a terrific section on the geology of west central Montana around Helena
Helena Outdoors
HelenaOutdoors a website that highlights to amazing trail system that surrounds Helena Montana by providing maps, trail descriptions and more.
iNaturalist
iNaturalist is a free app, a website, and a community of naturalists who share discoveries and support each other if they need support identifying organisms.
Merlin Bird ID
Merlin is a free app that allows you to use your phone to identify bird sounds or pictures. There is also a very simple, step-by-step identification process to help you home-in on what bird you are looking at.
Motus
Motus is an international collaborative research network that uses automated radio telemetry to track the movement and behaviour of small animals, like birds, bats, and insects. Motus is a program of Birds Canada, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bird conservation.
Montana Field Guide
The Montana Field Guide, part of the Montana Natural Heritage Program is the go to source for determining what plant, animal, or insect you have found. This is an amazing zero-cost resource.
NatureServe
NatureServe is the hub of a Network of 60 governmental and non-governmental programs located in the United States and Canada. Network organizations and their staff are working to protect and conserve the plants, animals, and ecosystems in their jurisdictions.
Seek, by iNaturalist
Take your nature knowledge up a notch with Seek! Use the power of image recognition technology to identify the plants and animals all around you. Seek is a free app from iNaturalist.
Space Weather Prediction Center
Curious about the aurora borealis? The NWS offers an Aurora Dashboard that provides a prediction of the aurora’s visibility in the next few days.
Add links to Peakfinder, Encyclopedia of Life, iTrack, Fieldguide to Clouds, Star Walk, Night Sky, Pl@ntNet, iSeek.