~ Early Web Links ~

Awkward Botany is an amateur botany blog written for the "phytocurious," covering plant families, weed profiles, horticulture, urban ecology, and plant identification with genuine depth and enthusiasm. Posts like the detailed breakdown of Liatris microcephala and the Weeds of Boise series showcase careful research and a love of plant science that will delight both beginners and seasoned plant nerds.

BC Rare Bird Alert is a community birding blog tracking rare and unusual bird sightings across British Columbia, Canada, with detailed location reports, maps, and observer notes. Each post documents a specific rare species encounter, making it an invaluable real-time resource for birdwatchers and ornithology enthusiasts in the Pacific Northwest.

A comprehensive scientific checklist of all Collembola (springtails) species in the world, searchable by taxon and linked to global distribution maps at family, genus, and species levels. The site also includes biology overviews, identification guides, collecting techniques, bibliographies, and images, making it an invaluable reference for entomologists and naturalists.

Seabean.com is a dedicated reference site exploring the fascinating world of sea-beans and drift seeds, those tropical seeds and fruits that travel ocean currents for thousands of miles before washing ashore. Visitors can learn how sea-beans float, where they originate, and how to identify specific species like Tropical Almond and Hog Plum.

The Lundy Bird Observatory Sightings Archive is a long-running blog documenting bird and wildlife observations from Lundy Island, now preserved as a historical archive after migrating to a new site in late 2023. Years of detailed sighting reports, species updates, and passage records make it a rich resource for birdwatchers and naturalists interested in this unique Atlantic island.

ITIS is the official Integrated Taxonomic Information System, a partnership between U.S. federal agencies and global specialists providing authoritative scientific names and taxonomic classifications for plants, animals, fungi, and microbes worldwide. Researchers and biodiversity professionals can search by common name, scientific name, or TSN identifier, access hierarchical taxonomic reports, and download the full database for integration into their own projects.

Built by a librarian and PhD student researching the cultural history of dinosaurs in children's media, Terrible Lizard blends academic bibliography, subject guides, and curated open-access resources in the spirit of old-school faculty homepages. Visitors will find ecohorror reading lists, dinosaur-related databases, language resources, and topic shrines organized with a librarian's careful hand.

Don Freiday's nature blog blends wildlife photography, birding observations, and philosophical reflections from the Pine Barrens of New Jersey and beyond. With over 3,000 posts and a career spanning competitive birding events across Texas, Israel, and the U.S., Freiday brings genuine expertise and a naturalist's eye to every entry.

Housed at the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library, the Western Soundscape Archive offers thousands of audio recordings of animal species and ambient environments across eleven western U.S. states and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Visitors can search or browse recordings of over 570 bird species, frogs, toads, reptiles, mammals, and wild landscape soundscapes contributed by volunteers, government agencies, and conservation groups.

Bert Hubert's long-running article explains DNA biology through the lens of a computer programmer, drawing analogies between genetic code and software concepts like error correction, compression, and the halting problem. Originally written in 2001 and revised multiple times since, it became popular enough to spawn a two-hour conference presentation and an upcoming book.