If you are into doing things yourself then here are a variety of resources that can help you develop your own project ideas. Use the filter below to limit the list (use CTRL or ⌘ to select multiple items in each list).
This Android and iOS app can help gardeners and those interested in plants that attact butterflies, hummingbirds and bees. The app has nearly 1,000 pollinator friendly plants native to the U.S. organized into regions and ecological characteristics for your area.
This simple guide can help the novice discover whether their specimen is a bee or not and if so, which family it belongs to. They use high resolution images to help explain the different defining characteristics, making it a great guide for anyone new to bee identification.
With over 1 million species of spiders and insects identified, it can be rather difficult to identify the species of your particular specimen. This website has photos and identifications for many of the common insects and spiders you might find using terms that the lay person can understand. They also have their data sorted by state and other categories and allow you to search their database using characteristics one can see by eye.
Vespidae are one of the numerous families of wasps. This group consists of over 5,000 species. This guide helps with identifying subfamiles and genera of specimens you may have found in northeast North America.
If you know what a nearctic chalcid is and need help identifying them, then this guide is for you. For everyone else, a chalcid wasp gets its name from khalkos, which means "copper" in Greek and refers to their metallic color.
BugGuide is a wonderful collection of images of insects, spiders, and other arthropods, grouped into their taxonomic categories all the way down to the species level. These people know their stuff and can help if you're stuck trying to identify a specimen. It helps to have a little knowledge of how these animals are organized before you start, however the search feature works well too.
Optics4birding provides an excellent guide to help you decide what binoculars are best for you. The owner and staff are avid birders, so they know their stuff and can help. If you happen to be in so-Cal area, and are in the market for a new pair or your first pair, they have every price range. This is where I bought my first serious pair of binoculars, which I still use today. They even have a kid specific guide.
Monarch Watch.org provides a wealth in information about the monarch butterfly. They describe the life cycle of monarchs, explain how to raise them and give ideas for classroom projects.
