alt Hacker NewsI think nature and plants always interested me since I was a kid. For example I loved to plant from seeds, see them grow, learn and explore a bit with curiosity my mum or aunt plants and when being out in the forest, but not a lot more than that.
Later, while growing up, I noticed my brain noticing plants or tree details, auto mapping them to possible genre, trying to find out, trying to memorize... but not always voluntarily, meaning that i felt like I was much more attracted and focused on plants and tree details and recognition after a certain age.
Something similar happened with birds, my brain started recording and recognizing the different birds sounds, and I started recognizing birds types more. Like something that before was a random signal or a bunch of sounds suddenly with age started having patterns and clear distinctions that attracted my brain and memory, and I simply started being able to distinguish birds by just hearing them.
I love it, I observe, I listen, I learn. I use the plant apps and birdnet for the bird soiunds (from CornellLab and Technical university of Chemnitz). Cool projects, lovely apps and interesting tech usage. I'm planning to upgrade terrace with constant camera feed for auto-detection.
But the main point is, does anybody relate to this grown interest to plants and bird distinction with age? is it something known and defined? it kinda feels like part of a biological evolution related to age, but no idea.
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I grew up in a small town in the upper Midwest and always had a strong pull toward the neighboring forests, streams and wetlands. There was a lot of wonder at that age, but I wasn’t prepared to really start contextualizing the depth/breadth of information until I was much older (which has obvious parallels to the systems/complexity thinking I enjoy elsewhere in my life/career).
As an adult, I have found great value in assistive tools Merlin and Seek/iNaturalist for bird and plant identification. I would encourage everyone to try out Merlin at least once to learn more about all the great variety of birds in your neighborhood.
I am also building a personal tool that captures and analyzes various environmental data sources (GIS, weather, phenological factors, species-specific habitat factors, etc) so that I can explore landscapes/ecosystems in my area (Minneapolis and MN/WI more broadly) to make the ecology/terrain legible and support observing various target species (fungi, migratory birds, fish runs, wildflower blooms, and so on).
The format of the tool is very map/visualization/dashboard heavy which is fine for me - but carries too much bulk for friends and family. The project for this fall/winter is rewrapping the iOS experience around a quiet phone/watch/earbuds field-mode that only surfaces information/guidance/cue-stake recognition in skill-preserving/developing and eyes-up/phone away experience.
It’s a fun project.
I've experienced that with trees over the last 5 years. I've been working on forest restoration on some land as a hobby and everywhere I travel I try to identify the trees I see.
For me, it's really just trees though. Birds and other wildlife are nice, but they don't draw my interest in the same way.
I knew I wanted to be a birder since I was a kid, but wasn't sure how to make that happen, now I can bird by ear and pick up a lot of species, have 700 wild bird species on the life list with photos, and hit the trails every weekend to look for birds, I run feeders, and track local wildlife with iNaturalist/eBird. I do think as some folks age they recognize that they want to be more connected with nature and work on that in their ways, my family was mostly the same. Nature's more real than what you see on the glowing rectangles.
> does anybody relate to this grown interest to plants and bird distinction with age
I have a similar interest but mine is about passively assimilating foreign languages while watching movies. Every time I grok a new expression it feels like a rush of dopamine.
I got very much into biology when I started growing weed at 24.
Now I can’t not have a little garden(currently growing chilli’s and a citrus tree, from seeds)
It seems to be the case for me, though I remember it being present as a child. It's like it went away in adolescence and came back later. Same goes for rocks, weather (beyond basic planning), and so on.
It is clearly a very useful skill to have as it helps us find food we know is safe. I think in the modern world this tends to be something most kids don't have an oppurtunity to develop. When in a more natural environment it would be expressed much earlier.
I don't relate to it myself, but I see it in people around me. It appears that's something that may not be limited to but is very prevalent in adults with very high functioning autism.
does anybody relate to this grown interest to plants and bird distinction with age?
I do, and I've seen it in others, but from the limited data points I've seen there's no causal relationship with age. I.e. what I've seen is people largely oblivious of nature/ecosystems/flora/fauna sudenly becoming very invested in it, for various reasons, but this doesn't happen at or only beyond a certain age. For me it was around 30 but that's simply because of a series of coincidences (new house, large garden, needed solution for mowing, happened to see a 2nd hand scythe, looked into grassland ecology, etc). But I know people whos obsession started at 16 and at 60 and like everything in between.