Not Sure What You've Spotted? Let iNaturalist's Experts Help

Unsure about what you've seen out in the bush? No worries. Naturalist has a feature that gets your sighting in front of an expert community who'll help you nail down the species.

The trick is taking a photo that's actually good enough to ID. So here's the short version:

• Get close, but stay sharp. Blurry close-ups are worse than slightly distant, clear ones. Tap your phone screen to lock focus on the subject.
• Capture the diagnostic features. For plants, that means leaves, flowers and the underside of leaves. For insects, the body from above, plus a side angle if you can get one. For fungi, the gills underneath are often what an expert needs to see.
• Multiple angles, one observation. Add several photos to a single observation rather than uploading them separately.
• Note the context. Habitat, what it was sitting on, time of day, all of it helps.
• Add a tentative ID. Even just "wattle" or "moth" gets your observation in front of the right specialists faster.

Then post it. Within hours...sometimes minutes, someone who knows what they're looking at will weigh in.