Want to know more about the watchable wildlife around you? Want to know the spots that people in your area are visiting to find their mammals, birds, invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians and more?

The (no more than weekly) WildObs Wildlife Update e-mail brings you encounters from the WildObs wildlife database centered around you.

Sign-up for WildObs to get wildlife updates delivered to you, and customized by you:

• Nearest public/syndicated wildlife sightings around you
• Closest wildlife sightings from species in your favorites or wish-list
• Any wildlife sightings from your friends in your network
• Featured encounters
• New places and species

Use your WildObs updates to connect with the wildlife around you, and find your nature.

Here is an example:

Learn about the wildlife around you

Sign up for WildObs to connect with the nature around you.

A few months back we introduced the crowd-sourced WildObs Wildlife Species Lists which tells you what species have been observed at the park or refuge you are at.

Now, we’ve updated this to group species by category (bird, mammal, etc.) but also to identify which species are new to you (lifers, or just new to your WildObs life list.)

Keep the feedback coming and we’ll keep on making WildObs more powerful.

Here is a a snippet of a sample:

Your Custom Species List

The image above is what a WildObs badge looks like.

If you’d like a visual way link to your wildlife observations, you can grab your WildObs badge here (once you’ve logged in.)

   http://wildobs.com/home/badge

The badge looks like this .

You’ll receive a small snippet of HTML to drop into your page or blog template, here is what mine looks like:

Sample Species List

The web is a wonderfully powerful tool for helping identify and locate wildlife, and mobile phones keep it available in many more places that we go. That said, sometimes it is nice to take  a break from technology. When wildlife spotting that includes being able to print out a species list, to folding it up and stuff it into a backpack or pocket to use as you explore untethered. Knowing what species you might see on a trip, especially those you’ve not seen recently or are new to your life list, really increases the pleasurable anticipation.

WildObs observers can download species lists for WildObs places that have sufficient species data. The lists are grouped by wildlife class, allow a pen/pencil checkmark or tally, and include the scientific name where available.

How much do these species lists cost?

The “price” to observers for these species lists is … that in return for a species list, you please report your wildobs encounters for your visit. Okay, not a serious price, but the sentiment is good. Get from the community, and give back to the community to grow the community knowledge as a whole. If you encounter something not listed on the species list, definitely record it.

Where next?

As more data is available within the WildObs database these species lists will become more informative with information like “common”/”uncommon”, what seasons to expect them and even if they been seen very recently. You can help get us there by submitting your encounters.

Feedback welcomed as always.

WildObs allows you to share your wildlife encounters with your Twitter followers, it also imports your Twitter friends. Recently Twitter improved how applications interact with their site by requiring a user authenticate against their system.  This is good for your security, and your application management, however it requires that for WildObs to continue to tweet on your behalf you need to take a moment to authorize it.

Here is what is required:

Ensure you are logged in to WildObs and Twitter. Then visit this page on WildObs

http://wildobs.com/manage/profile/twitter_authorize

WildObs makes a request to Twitter, and redirects you here:

Authorizing WildObs access to Twitter

Once authorized Twitter will return you to WildObs.

WildObs Authenticated. And you are done.

Once authorized you are done. Right now this is a one time operation, so you ought not need to do this again (and if not indefinitely, for a very long time.)

WildObs Naturalist 2.0 and WildObs Lookout 2.0 are available in the iTunes App Store.

Both these WildObs products now contain the functionality of WildObs Observer (to record any encounter along with time/location/photograph) but also provide their own features on top. This allows you to pick the WildObs application that is right for you, and stick with that one application.

WildObs Naturalist also let’s you :

• Browse all your records, recent and most viewed, and view your species – favorites, wishlist, and life-list
• Find new wildlife locations around your location, based off other observer’s encounters.
• Find new wildlife species around your location, based off other observer’s encounters.
• Map your recent/local wildlife encounters.

Use your encounters to find nature...

WildObs Lookout also let’s you:

• Browse recent/local wildlife encounters
• Browse recent/local wildlife encounters for species from your favorites/wishlist
• View what your network of observers are seeing.
• Checkout the wildlife at nearby willdife spots (based off other observer’s encounters.)

See what others have seen...

WildObs Observer 2.0 is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod, see here: http://wildobs.com/about/observer

WildObs Observer let’s you record your wildlife encounters (on or offline in the woods), but also let’s you :

• Browse all your records
• See what species are around your location, based off other observer’s encounters.
• Lookup a species by name (partial or scientific.)
• Browse (and comment upon) recent and featured wildlife encounters.

One thing I really enjoy, is that featured encounters are viewable on the home page. Check this and others out …

To record your wildlife encounter with WildObs all you need are the what, where, when.

• What species did you see.
• Where did you see it.
• When did the encounter occur.

Here is a short video of the process on the website:

More WildObs videos can be found here http://youtube.com/wildobservations.

Some tips & pointers:

• Everything is editable, and things like descriptions, photos, videos can be added at a later date.
• Don’t worry if WildObs doesn’t find your species or location immediately, those can be refined later (including being added to the WildObs database.)
• Tags (keywords) are comma separated categorizations. E.g. first-of-season.
• Title and Description are optional, but do enrich the encounter.
• Syndicate means “this is more than the everyday encounter, it should be published as such”.
• Public/Private allows you to  record encounters, but not share them with anybody else.

Quickest Record Entry:

Record your Encounter (with context)

Whenever you see the following link button on the top right of a page you can enter a wildobs, and information from the page you are on will be used as defaults on that wildobs encounter. This can save both typing and look-ups.

• Species page: The species (what) is defaulted.
• Place page: The place (where) is defaulted.
• Encounter page. The species & place are defaulted.
• Image page. The photograph is defaulted.

For example if you’ve seen another encounter that you’ve posted before, you can press “Record your WildObs” on that encounter to carry over most of t he details (with the time changing to now.)

Thanks for sharing your wildlife, and guiding others to nature.

Use WildObs Lookout to find your nature:

• Find nearby encounter from the WildObs community (including for your favorite and wish-list species.)
• Find nearby wildlife places (National Parks, State Parks, and more.)
• Browse encounters from the WildObs community.

The latest WildObs Lookout is in the App Store:

Find your nature with WildObs Lookout

Find Nearby Encounters:

Find nearby nature with WildObs Lookout

View an Encounter:

Find your nature with WildObs Lookout

Show the Species:

Find your nature with WildObs Lookout

Map the Encounter:

Find your nature with WildObs Lookout

We just released WildObs Mobile for Android version 1.3 into the market with a new menu item: HOME.

The HOME button allows you to log in to WildObs Mobile and enabled features like commenting upon encounters, and allowing you to record encounters from your mobile browser.

As always, feedback is welcomed and encouraged. Please let us know how this works for you.

Login to your WildObs account from your Android device.

Record the what, where & when of your wildlife encounters. This version provides optional support for use of device GPS to capture location information speeding your wildlife recording.

Record your WildObs wildlife encounters from your Android device

Find out more about WildObs Mobile for Android or (if you are on an Android device) go to the market: