I found starting with a limited location and time will be your best friends. Outside of that take notes in docs with pictures and checklists of common things in your state. I also use for my state the DE plant database which tells me habitat, flowering periods and what counties plants are found in. Gobotony has a good key for northeast plants, but it is sometimes missing the southern species we get in the state. For bugs I recommend bugguide which can help give pointers on identification and let you know when you’re not going to get below family on photos alone. For mushrooms I like mushroom expert but I find dna is reworking most mushrooms to the point I am very hesitant to identify them. I also will use visually similar and checklist for computer vision suggestions but know they can be wildly inaccurate. Over time you will start to get a feel for what you can id but understand you won’t be able to id everything. On average I can identify 10-15 out of every 30 observations I see and personally I think that is really good. Finally, when in doubt ask identifiers why they went with what they did, most of us will be happy to share tips and tricks we have picked up over time.
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