Virtual Nature

It's that time of year when you start thinking about what nature-related gifts to give friends and family you wish to surprise with the fact that you are not a technological dinosaur. May I suggest the gift of apps (or gift cards) for whatever electronic device your friends or family are apt to possess, whether an iPhone or iPad or those knock-off devices known as Androids?

OK, well maybe you have to buy an iPhone or iPad as the first item on your gift list, but once in hand, here are a few apps I really love and use frequently.

The single app I love the most is the Mitch Waite Group's iBird Explorer PRO. It is an interactive reference to (at least) 914 North American bird species and includes a painting, photo(s), recordings of the bird's call(s), range map, description, behavior details, links to resources, and the ability to take your own notes. The bird calls function provides endless entertainment for my cats, or more specifically entertainment for me watching how my cats react to the bird calls.

For plants, I love Audubon's North American Trees app and Audubon's North American Wildflowers app. There are many regional wildflower apps available, too. The talk of the town (in Washington, DC) is the new free app called Leafsnap. Developed by a consortium from Columbia University, the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Institution, Leafsnap is the first in a series of electronic field guides that allows you to snap a picture of a tree leaf with your iPhone, upload the leaf image to a database, and voila, the app informs you of the tree's identity.

In the realm of space, the sky is the limit. I suggest Star Walk by Vito Technology Inc. for identifying your nighttime sky view. With the extraordinary iPad app Solar System by Marcus Chown, I learned more about the solar system in one hour than I ever knew. Other space apps I love and use include SoLuna, Deluxe Moon, Planets, Moon HD, and to see daily activity from the SOHO/NASA website I use RealSun which gives me about an 8-hour heads-ups of the arrival to Earth's atmosphere of coronal mass ejections (solar flares). I want to know when the "big one" hits and it will. When that happens there is the potential to fry every microchip on the planet, and of course, all of our devices will be useless.

Second option: buy a book.