If I go alone then I would typically call it “butterfly hunting” although I am also in pursuit to take pictures of any critter that I see. sometimes i just call it “going out for a walk”
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As i usually only post stuff i photograph while out diving, i refer to it as “data collecting” 
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Purposeful peregrinations?
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I go out observing.
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When at home in my acre patch I say: I’m going for a gallivant! (with childlike wonder and enthusiasm :))
generally I say: going 'sploring (for non English speakers: this is exploring in a personalized shorthand) or going to find some wild friends.
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“Geeking” gets some use in Ontario but not sure it’s likely to catch on.
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Ours is a weekly fynbos ramble. (Fynbos is the Cape Floral Kingdom)
Ramble … because we warn new people … we stop … at … every flower. Some of us stop 'cos we heard a bird. A few of us stop for that bug. Distance we don’t cover.
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I just remembered that I also call it “scanning the Serengeti”
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The image of a butterfly moving about from flower to flower… Maybe we go “fluttering”?
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" Nobody expects the Pasturial Inquisition!
Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and observation…observation and surprise…
Our two weapons are observation and surprise…and ruthless annotation…
Our three weapons are observation, surprise, and ruthless annotation…and an almost fanatical devotion to our cameras…
Our four…no… Amongst our weapons… Amongst our weaponry…are such elements as observation, surprise… I’ll come in again."
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It’s pretty much a given I’ll be making observations* any time I go anywhere so I just tell my husband where I’m going. 
*Quantity and quality dependent on destination and the equipment I’m taking along.
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i do this too…turns out I actually have tourette’s. I often include a movement in my excitement. Before I knew I had tourette’s (complicated story, I probably knew deep down) I affectionately referred to gray catbirds as “tourette’s birds.”
I wonder if I should say I’m going “generalizing” since I’m never just looking at one thing and birding or mothing or herping or botanizing never covers it all.
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My family has said that I go “frolicking in the woods”. I prefer to say I’m going exploring, or I’m going on an adventure. I go “to seek out new life and new identifications, to boldly go where no man has gone before…or at least not many at any rate.”
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I would say “Who wants to go exploring?” or “Who wants to go for a drive?” Although lately all I have to do is shake my camera when they ask me where I’m going, lol.
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I’d try, but I don’t think iNat recognizes the taxonomy.
;P
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My grandmother was raised in the same small town in Småland. His boyhood home and gardens are still there-- how genius is it, to be raised in the middle of nowhere where nobody knew botany, and more than a century before Darwin and Mendel, to come up with a relationship plan that still works? Makes me believe in aliens, that his taxonomy has held so firmly.
(favorite plant: Linnaea borealis, saw it on the hoof in the forests he wandered)
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I tended to use Pooh’s descriptor, “a long explore” with my kids. "It was a very long explore finding it, so it will be a very long explore for Tigger unfinding it again.”
Now it’s just
genus = hike
spp. = insert birding, wildflowers, ferns, bugs, reeds… whatever floats your kayak.
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When people on trails ask me what I’m looking for (usually after seeing me poking around in weeds or turning over logs), I generally just say “lookin’ for critters” or “looking for whatever there is to see”. In addition to tailored forays like birding and ‘herping’, I’ve also heard ‘salamandering’ among friends, but don’t know how widespread it is outside amphibian enthusiasts. Based on my own interests, after rains I go out looking for what I call “the 4 Ms”: mushrooms, millipedes, mollusks, and… 'manders. :)
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M5, moths? (post-rain moths of course but won’t they be eager to get out after being cooped up?)
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