and that lichen? crust, damaged by offroaders, which takes decades to recover in a desert.
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I just love to learn I always have!
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Go out. Find things in nature that interest you. Try to figure out what they are then put them on iNaturalist and be open to learning and being wrong. Repeat until someone asks you this same question.
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Itās getting your hand dirty that does it - get outside and look at stuff and be prepared to make mistakes, which you will. Thatās how we learn. I happen to be a biologist with strings of letters after my name but that doesnāt make me a particularly good ānaturalistā. A lot of biology is about how animals do what they do and physiology and biochemistry etc rather than naming of names. I am pretty god at birds however because I stepped out of the hard science stuff and joined a birding club and went out with others and looked at birds and we discussed them. I seriously suggest - unless you hate birds - doing likewise because there are more birders than any other sort of naturalist I suspect and birders are friendly and love to share their knowledge and help novices. Thereās bound to be a birding club in almost any town on the planet.
You will then find (my experience) that one of those birders happens to also know a lot about fern and will break off to go into raptures about something beside the trail. That way you also start to learn about ferns and so it goes on. People are your best resource.
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Find what you are interested in- for me it was snakes. Focus on that and before you know it, you will be interested in everything!
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I like this emphasis on place, too. While focusing on individual organisms is a good strategy if there is something that already really engages you, choosing a place to develop a relationship with can work very well, too, and wonāt have you dreaming in frustration about Namibia for that very-cool fringe-toed lizard rather than engaging with your own every-day environment and the amazing things living in it.
Many āPlacesā are already defined on iNaturalist, and with the built in checklist function you can see what organisms have been documented there. Choosing a nearby Place, then heading out regularly and trying to find the plants or animals on the checklist will teach you an immense amount about ecosystems and how life relates to other life and the physical environment (which is the definition of ecology). Youāll get to where you notice patterns and can predict where things will be, and successfully finding them becomes as satisfying as a treasure hunt!
In fact, Iād say that watching for patterns is really the trick to everything, isnāt it?
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Post photos of things you see and sound recordings of things you hear. Try to ID them to at least a high level (birds, flowering plants, spiders, mammals) and then watch as the ID suggestions come it. If you donāt know why they knew how to recognize it, ask in a comment. Most identifiers are glad to educated interested observers. If you get high level observations that donāt get further ID, read about those organisms and maybe ask a top identifier what sorts of info you need to capture to get a better ID. Someone here told me the trick of photographing the underside of flowers in the sunflower family, because the bracts under the flower head are often diagnostic.
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Very well put.
Friends and Wonders!
I will now take the liberty of adding a concept that is only vaguely connected but sufficiently relevant and reinforces the thrill value most iNat users experience as participants (my excuse:- Iām from a medical background and like to reminisce).
As an entry level student of general medicine we were lucky to have a very highly qualified lecturer in psychiatry who however was best known for his wicked humour, which he employed as a brilliant way to convey his accumulated life wisdom, while avoiding the pitfalls of "too many big words " that is an occupational hazard across all tertiary institutions and for all disciplines.
The late professor asked us what we knew about RDP.
Blank looks on every face in the lecture theatre.
He explained that if you blend all of the worldās psychological and psychiatric facts and theories (noting that this was 4+ decades ago; theories were being overtaken by the science of neurochemistry, the roles of melatonin, serotonin etcetera were arriving at an exponential rate in a brave new world of evidence based science, and technology ran a close second) youāll almost have arrived at āThe Meaning of Lifeā!, Well, at least the best measure of assessing an individualās quality of life :RD and P, RISK DANGER and PAIN.
Stepping outdoors, even if you stay in your yard and never cross a road, brings some risks. You might get a mozzie bite or sunburn, and being stung by a bee is painful and dangerous: anaphylaxis may even kill you.
But without daily exposure to RDP you will not know youāre alive.
We all need daily adrenalin and serotonin surges to maintain our self-awareness and to taste, fleetingly, that indefinable thing we call happiness.
Nowadays enjoying nature has earned many new labels, eg Nature Play.
But it will always be a daily dose of RDP to older people like me.
Being an iNaturalist guarantees good quality RDP.
Boy do I run on, but at least I got the message 
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Wow! This conversation could go on forever and in a countless number of directions! One response that resonated was from @janetwright. āFriends and Wondersā. @TheWoah, you may be just starting on the journey but I suspect you have already found some āfriendsā; plants or animals that you see every year in a certain place or time of year that bring good memories. I also suspect youāve discovered your own āwondersā that in time may become good friends. For me that is the awesome (and I use that word literally) aspect of Nature. After nearly 70 years of observing and experiencing the Natural world Iām still finding wonders and still making new friends. Just stay curious about what you see in the ānaturalā world, donāt be afraid to make and admit mistakes and youāll become good on iNaturalist.
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I just learn from the best!Or at least, the best that I currently know! Mainly Carabidologists and other Coleopterists. Iād give a list of them, but I donāt want to miss any one, and I donāt have that kind of time.
Thank you everyone who has helped me get to where I am now in the wonderful world of entomology.
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I recently came across this excerpt from a new book entitled Diary of a Young Naturalist and thought of this discussion. You (and some of the others here) might find it interesting. Itās about being a naturalist, not an iNaturalist, but of course iNat is really just a tool for naturalists to observe, identify, share and learn.
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I really like to read. Being curious really helps here. I donāt know where you live, but familiarizing yourself with common, easy-to-recognize species in your surroundings is the first step.
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I clicked the āLikeā button, but I have to say that your comment is one of the best Iāve seen on the Forum. It is truly inspiring. And I must echo it - after nearly 60 years of being in Nature, I am still finding, and loving, new stuff!
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What an amazingly real and insightful young man! Besides his passion for nature, he is very gifted in his writing style.
I hear Dad come back from work, and with him an injured bat. Sheās the first of the year and we tend to it ā females only have one pup a year, such precious cargo. We feed
ā Many people accuse me of ānot looking autisticā. I have no idea what that means. I know lots of āautisticsā and we all look different. Weāre not some recognisable breed. We are human beings
.ā
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Get a good dichotomous key and key out every plant you find. Itās a great way to learn to ID species.
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In addition to reading and learning from others, my suggestion would be to have some confidence in yourself and your powers of observation. I meet so many people who start off saying they ājust canāt learnā something before they even start! (Itās more often a woman than a man, which could lead me down a ;long path of grrrrrr at the sort of people who raise women to be helpless and ādumb.ā) As someone else said, take a chance that youāre right, look it up in a good book, and go on from there.
I once was scheduled to give a wildflower walk, but a thunderstorm came up. We retired to the classroom at the nature center and I gave an impromptu seminar on how to use a field guide. Itās amazing how many people have never even cracked one of those books, much less actually used it, but they want you to recite the names of every plant they see, over and overā¦ I am a woman and I READ the field guides when Iām not outdoors. Maybe Iām just particularly visual, but if Iāve seen it in the book, I will usually recognize it when I see it in the wild.
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Just today I was able to identify a plant that is not in my wildflower guide. I went to the keys at Jepson eFlora, and since I didnāt have the plant in front of me, I used the key to narrow it down to about seven genera. Then, I did Google image searches for each of those genera to eliminate the ones that didnāt match what I saw.
To do this, I had to remember not just the form and color of the flowers (yellow, Cichoriae type), but also the leaves (along the whole stem instead of just basal; looked like wintercress) and the fruits (looked like star anise). The best way to develop your skills is learn to look at different parts of the organism long enough to recall a clear mental picture of them. Once this is burned into your memory, you will get to the point where a brief glance can often be enough ā the key features stand out.
In case you were wondering, it was Rhagadiolus stellatus, an introduced species, so far only known in North America from Napa and Sonoma Counties, California.
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Your words seem to answer my question of being a naturalist. Because actually Iām still confused about how to be a good naturalist. Thank you very much 
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If you can find local nature walks, bird walks, butterfly programs, etc. nearby, attend them! Learning from experts how to observe a given taxon, and how to identify species, has been really important for me. I also read field guides voraciously. If you donāt have a live expert to guide you, a well-written one can do too.
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I think there is no good or bad naturalist just naturalist. It depends upon you what do you do as naturalist. Like for me it is just observing closely the changes in nature and make note about it. Some people study them closely and get a good job ,it depends on you.
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