Most people look forward to fall for the football, pumpkin spice and cozy sweaters. I look forward to the bugs.

Insects and spiders have been a hyper-fixation of mine ever since I started using iNaturalist in 2019. I photograph them and upload those photos to the iNaturalist app, which suggests possible species identifications. If you can't identify the insect (or plant or animal, for that matter), other users do it for you.

Using iNaturalist has resulted in the exponential expansion of my knowledge of local insects and spiders. (Did you know insects and arachnids are two different classes?) I used to photograph every insect I saw, but now, I only do so if it's a rare-ish insect or one I can't identify. I don't need the app anymore because it sufficiently taught me how to identify hu

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