comments:
Always grab your phone/ camera and take a pic. Even better, take a video if the animal is making noise. That way you can enjoy watching the animal and reference your pic later to ID it. If all else fails, upload the pic / video to ChatGPT. I prefer this laminated pamphlet. Super easy to carry around and ID animals. You can look up more info in a book or online later. I feel like flipping through a book makes it harder to quickly ID an animal.https://a.co/d/0iG1YN04 For birds —- eBird and Merlin are the gold standard for tracking lists of birds you’ve seen. (Two different apps but if you use the same account the list stays synced.) They are used by many birders, so you can easily toggle off the birds you have seen to find hotspots of birds you haven’t seen.- I like the Audubon app’s bird ID feature. You put in the colors, etc and then scroll through options. They also have a list keeper, but I don’t use it.- BirdNET is super fun for singing birds. Even if you can’t see a bird, you can record its song and get some info on what bird it might be. Also, sign up for a Bar Harbor Whale Watch Co cruise. They have a few focused on different animals. We just did the puffin one and also saw many bald eagles. Puffin season will end soon, so if your priority is a certain animal, I’d call to get their recommendation on which cruise will be best for that animal.