I've always been incredibly curious about all the life around me but at the age of 35 it finally started to bug me that I had no idea what, for example, the doz

I've always been incredibly curious about all the life around me but at the age of 35 it finally started to bug me that I had no idea what, for example, the dozens of types of birds around me were called. For the past few months I've started making it a point to identify every single bird that I see around the yard, to spend a few minutes locating a photo of it and listening to its call and reading information about it on Wikipedia. Just in the past few months I've identified over two dozen birds that I grew up seeing and hearing and now I finally know what they're called. What I'm realizing is that it takes active participation and interest in indentifying things to really learn their names and their histories, not just a passing interest. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a site [1] and an app that is amazing for identifying birds. My favorite feature is how it also lists birds that are similar, which makes it a lot easier to find the specific bird you're looking for. I then compare visual information with the auditory information of the birds calls to make a concrete identification. 1. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/search/ https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/search/