zlacker

Two ways I’ve made walks less boring:

- I started carrying a camera

- I started using the Merlin Bird ID app

Photography has made me realize how much I was previously ignoring. There’s so much to see, and even when walking the same route over and over, there’s an astounding amount of change over time. Often little things.

The Bird ID app made me realize just how many unique birds were making up the sounds I was hearing. As I learned to distinguish between them, I found myself fascinated in a way that I’d never been before.

Walks became almost meditative over time, and the sights and sounds a kind of salve for my often tired brain.

I often feel like I can think more clearly when walking as well, and thought processes kind of just sort themselves out as I go.

I highly recommend making walks more than just a way to move your body. They can be much more, and getting the benefits of movement almost feels like a happy side effect.

>>haswel+(OP)
+1 Merlin. I also stop and do a few minutes with Duolingo in the park, then take a breath and just listen to the wind and birdsong.

>>haswel+(OP)
I also recommend the Seek app by iNaturalist. Though if you’re like me and use it to identify plants and every bug you see, you may not actually get that much walking accomplished.

>>nkrisc+tv
My wife and I have a running joke about the Seek app: "Dicots. It's always dicots."

Too often, pointing Seek at a plant results in "dicots", which is about half the flowering plants out there.

>>mikest+az
I feel like seek's IDs are not as good as they should be given the state of ML. Maybe a dataset problem but still.

>>ajkjk+WH
Season likely plays a factor too. There are many plants that more or less look identical (to the untrained eye) until they either bloom or grow large enough.

>>nkrisc+4I
true. it is also pretty bad at IDing things that are half-formed, eg a bud that hasn't bloomed yet, presumably because most photos in the dataset are of the blooming version.