~ Early Web Links ~

Peter Alfrey's birding notebook chronicles his passionate pursuit of birds across the UK and beyond, with detailed field accounts of species sightings, migration events, and twitches at sites like Beddington Farmlands and the Azores. The blog spans years of dated posts and connects to related projects including an eBird profile, a Black Sea observatory project, and pelagic birding trips.

Rod Crawford's Spider Collector's Journal chronicles decades of arachnid collecting expeditions from 1986 through the present, including trips to the Russian Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Island. The site features year-by-year narrative accounts, photo albums, and detailed documentation of tools and techniques used in scientific spider collection.

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.

Dendroica is a long-running nature blog with hundreds of posts spanning years of birding, moth-watching, and wildlife observation, named after a genus of wood-warblers. The archive stretches back many years with consistent weekly updates including a recurring 'Loose Feathers' series, and the blogroll connects to a rich community of birding and entomology blogs.

The Desert Springs Action Committee (DSAC) is a volunteer group dedicated to hands-on aquatic conservation and education, focusing on desert fish habitats in Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, Death Valley National Park, and Devils Hole. The site also features TKphotos digital image collections covering desert springs, aquarium fish, and regional wildlife.

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.

A scholarly resource from UCLA's CogWeb project exploring Theory of Mind (ToMM), the cognitive mechanisms humans use to attribute mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions to others. Written by Francis F. Steen in 1997, it covers the groundbreaking work of Alan Leslie and Simon Baron-Cohen on autism, child development, and the evolutionary origins of mind-reading abilities.

Beetlecraft is a charming personal site by Ace, a self-described bug enthusiast who shares their love of insects, nature, bone mounting, and art through a whimsical hand-crafted aesthetic. Visitors can explore a bugs page featuring finds like the Duckbilled Beetle, an art gallery, a curios section, and a blog with guides to activities like bone mounting.

BirdList.org is a comprehensive global reference cataloging over 10,000 bird species across 200 countries, with data coded for abundance, breeding, migration, wintering, and endemic status. Run by professional biologists affiliated with the World Institute for Conservation and Environment, the site also offers bird tour listings for destinations like Peru, Ecuador, Ethiopia, and Uganda, with species lists available in multiple languages.

Created by David Ulansey, this long-running reference site compiles hundreds of links to authoritative scientific reports documenting the ongoing sixth mass extinction and global biodiversity crisis. Active since 1998 and last updated in 2021, it covers species loss across vertebrates, insects, plants, and freshwater animals, drawing on sources like the IUCN, UN, WWF, and major scientific journals.