Nature discovery apps
Continuing our going-back-outside theme, here are the apps that can help you rediscover the great outdoors and its wonderful wildlife (plus pubs)
And if you look over the fence, there’s even more green stuff…
mygarden
Assuming the British weather doesn’t troll us by snowing right through summer, and assuming you have a patch of land to plant stuff in, this app helps you get green-fingered. It provides inspiration and ways to plan: there’s a journal for noting successes plus a plant library to help you track what you shove into the soil, how often it should be watered, and whether you’ll die if you eat some for dinner. £free / IOS
Plantnet
Shazam for plants? Well, they don’t make any noise, so no. What you do get here, though, is a plant-specific reverse image search. Shoot a few snaps, tell the app whether it’s looking at a leaf, a flower, a fruit or some bark, and it’ll rifle through its database to let you know what you’re gawping at, have just wrenched out of the ground or are keen to munch on because shiny berries are so pretty.
£free / Android, IOS
Picture Insect
Is that beetle going to go for your throat? Will that ant eat your brains? OK, so the UK’S mini-beasts aren’t that exciting nor terribly dangerous, but it can still be fun to figure out what you’ve found while digging through the dirt on a ramble. This app provides handy descriptions of what you snap and keeps your finds in a gallery collection. Just be mindful it’ll often ‘bug’ you to subscribe.
£free (IAP) / Android, IOS
inaturalist
This app urges you to become a citizen scientist, scouring your local area to record organisms you find and share them with the world. Or you can just be lazy and take advantage of everyone else’s hard work. Either way, you can zoom into a map, tap a grid to see what plants and critters were once nearby, and then get all miffed when you rock up for a closer look and everything’s gone into hiding.
£free / Android, IOS
BIRDNET
Birdsong is mostly territorial types yelling at each other. Still, it sounds nice. With BIRDNET, you can record, select and analyse such sounds to discover which birds are nearby. It’s not quite Shazam for birds (Chirpomatic is closer), but the slightly fiddly interface is compensated by the app’s impressive accuracy. (We checked – to the point where we can now identify a dozen British bird chirps.)
£free / Android, IOS
Pub Walks
If you think the outdoors can only really be called ‘great’ if it involves a beer garden, but are nonetheless keen to take in nature, this app gives you the best of both: it’ll advise about pubs that are close to idyllic locations. You can then start from a pub’s front door, head off for a stroll (GPS ensuring you won’t get horribly lost), and end up back at the same pub having worked up a nice thirst.
£free / Android, IOS