Nature Forums on the Web

• Find Nature Forums on the web (currently mostly facebook groups), and selected online galleries, books & sites, appropriate to your location and set of interests!

WILD - These links are for wild/natural plants/creatures/habitats, with a few exceptions - for example you will find some links listed for cultivated plants too.
FORUMS - Most of the sites are interactive forums (mostly on facebook) however there are some selected static websites, which are marked '[Site]' and selected online books.
SEARCHING - You can restrict the results list to topic, location & language ranges of your choice as well as when they were added, and present them in different list styles.
JOINING GROUPS - It is recommended that you join as many local forums as possible, and also some wider ones. Local forums have a wonderful comraderie, and may also meet up, whilst the wider forums catch things that are rare or absent in your area.
MAKING NEW FORUMS - If there is no local forum for your area or topic, please consider setting one up, either with a county catchment and/or for your neighbourhood, and let people know, such as by mentioning it on a connected group with a good membership. Within a year or two it will have grown. You will need to get it buzzing with regular posts but after a while people will start to contribute too. Go to your Groups and click Create Group. Maybe make it public for a year and if you like then change it to closed. Avoid close-duplication of existing groups. Groups usually gain 'momentum' once they reach about 100 members, but it can happen earlier as what drives things forward is 2-3 people prepared to post regularly and comment. For regions of less than 500,000 people you are often best creating a general 'Nature & Environment' group to attract a sufficiently large membership rather than something specific, although some places smaller populations will work.
REVISIT - Please recheck this page regularly for additions. If you do so every month you can click the 'New This Month' button to catch up. You can be notified of monthly additions to check for by liking this facebook page where updates are posted.
FEEDBACK - Please suggest additions, for which contact David Merrick
SHARE - Please share this page with individuals and groups you feel will benefit from it.
TIP - To save a post on any facebook forum for later viewing, bookmark the timestamp for the post or any of the comments to return later.

txt icon How to Search

NB : Hover over a box to get an explanation for it!

Topics/Locations - All the web forums are given a geographic region (usually approximated by rectangular region(s)) and topic(s), most having just one topic, so you will usually want to restrict by place and topic. Having no selection is equivalent to selecting everything.
Topics - See above. Choose as many as you are interested in. Clicking once will highlight, clicking again unhighlight, clicking the '+' will expand it into subtopics. When a topic has items within, the first item will often be the 'wide' or general item typically called 'Mixed', and the other items within are specialised entries. So if you wanted to find all the specialised creature forums but not the general ones you would click 'Creatures' and then unclick 'Mixed'.
Title - Enter something to search within titles, eg 'RSPB' or 'Trust'. Type freely but spell correctly, however remember the group title itself may be spelled wrongly (eg Bird's of the Shire) or often not contain your term, so searching by title is not your primary method but may be useful.
Age (Days Max) - To restrict items added to within a certain age enter the number of days or a yyyymmdd date, eg 31 will restrict to the last month and 20160401 will restrict to anything added after Apr 2016. The 'New Last Month' button is a quick way of using this, as well as the presets 30 60 90.
Presentation - This set of options allow you to control how the results are presented.
Sort By - Choose an ordering and if wished subordering for results; meaningful grouping headers will be added. Usually you'll want your primary sort to be Distance. Sorting by When Added allows you to scan down what's been added. Try them and see.
Dim Duplicates - Dim items that are duplicate mentions due to being in more than one category when you search by several topics with a topic sort. This is a useful visual feature to save you clicking items twice.
Data Table - Produces a table which you can copy and paste (choose as plain text) into another program such as a Spreadsheet or Database. Items marked 'D' indicate repeat items, you can use your spreadsheet program to remove these (eg sort by that column so they are seggregated and then delete them).
Find Selected - Show result list based on the options you have chosen.
Everything - Show everything (ignoring your restriction options), presented using your presentation style.
New Last Month - Show items added in the last month (ignoring your restriction entries), presented using your presentation style.
Since Last Visit - See what's been added since your last use of this button (ignoring your restriction entries), presented using your presentation. The first time you do this it has no last use date and will show you everything, thereafter it will do so.

Topics of Interest : (All) x SEL
Area of Interest	INSTRUCTIONS : Here you make rectangle on the map to give your area of interest. Zoom and move the map to the right place. Click on the map in two places to place its two corners. You can then adjust the corners by clicking a marker then letting go and clicking somewhere else to move it. Or to start again click 'Clear Markers'. If you only put in a single point, then the '± km' value will be used to form a rectangle around that point. (Tip: to move a marker just a tiny bit, either move it away then back or zoom in.) • Get GPS • (Single points are ± NS, EW km) • Clear Markers • View Info • Click Map to choose place (remember to enter the right ± km!!!) Lat1,Lng1 x 2 x
Title Contains	x
Language Contains	x (eg Dutch,Norw,Danis,Icelan - comma-separated part-matched)
Site Type Contains	x (eg Group, Book, Gallery, Page, Site - comma-separated part-matched)
Age (Days Max) :	days old (to present) - presets : 30 60 90 x
Presentation :	Sort By then • Dim Duplicates like this • Spreadsheet ADVANCED : Link Shows Find • Link Fills Find • Debug
	Reset Form • Hide Form • Advanced
Go	Find Selected • Everything • New Last Month • Since Last Visit

Results

TIP : If you can't find what you are after in your chosen topics and location, try selecting a more generalised topic or location eg if you are looking for Flowers in Dundee and under Botany have chosen Flowers and Location Dundee but cannot find a group then try 'Botany (Gen)' / Scotland, and if that doesn't help try a higher level such as 'Nature (Gen)' / Britain.

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KEY : Items in light colour repeat items earlier in list • [Site] is a static site • [Large] means large membership.