Looking to learn more about Pacific Northwest Natural History?
Use the links below to improve your skills as a naturalist! There is a ton of information available to anyone interested in exploring the natural world, but sometimes it’s difficult to locate exactly what you’re looking for. These resources are the ones I most regularly utilize in my own explorations. Perhaps they’ll be useful to you as well. Many of these guides utilize dichotomous keys to assist you in species identifications. These keys can be confusing for first-time users, so check out these tutorials (here, here, and here) if you’re feeling lost.

Plants:

• Burke Herbarium Image Collection
• Edible, Medicinal, and Poisonous Plants of Montana
• Wild Harvests (personal foraging guide to the PNW)
• Paul Slichter’s Flora Northwest

Fungi:

• Mushroom Expert (key to North American fungi)
• ASU Lichen Herbarium (Greater Sonoran Desert Flora Project)
• Ways of EnLICHENment

Invertebrates:

• Invertebrates of the Salish Sea
• Pacific Northwest Moths
• Bug Guide (general Arthropods)
• Butterflies and Moths (mostly butterflies)
• The Paulson Dragonfly and Damselfly Library (Slater Museum)
• Odonata Central

Birds:

• eBird (data-based range maps, local occurrences)
• Xeno-Canto (sound database)
• All About Birds (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
• Slater Museum Digital Wing Collection
• The Feather Atlas (US FWS Forensics Laboratory)

Mammals:

• Montana Field Guide – Mammals

Reptiles and Amphibians:

• Slater Museum Resources (keys and checklists for Washington)
• Montana Field Guide – Reptiles
• Montana Field Guide – Amphibians

Fish:

• Slater Museum Resources (checklist of fish in Washington)
• Montana Field Guide – Fish

General Natural History:

• Northwest Nature Notes (Slater Museum)
• Plants collected and described by Lewis and Clark

Books:

• Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest by Bruce McCune
• Microlichens of the Pacific Northwest by Bruce McCune
• Common Spiders of North America by Richard A. Bradley
• Mammals of Montana by Kerry Foresman
• Manual of Montana Vascular Plants by Peter Lesica
• Flora of the Pacific Northwest by Hitchcock and Cronquist
• Whelks to Whales by Rick Harbo
• Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest by Steve Trudell and Joe Ammirati
• Dragonflies and Damselflies of the West by Dennis Paulson
• Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast by Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon
• Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia and the Inland Northwest by Parish, Coupe, and Lloyd
• Mushrooms Demystified by David Aurora
• Wild Berries of Washington and Oregon by T. Abe Lloyd and Fiona Chambers

Downloadable Keys and Guides:

• Tiger Beetles (Cicindelinae) of the PNW
• Winter Twigs of the Coastal PNW by H.M. Gilkey and P.L. Packard (1962)
• Caloplaca of the PNW – now included in Microlichens of the PNW (above)
• Key to the Vascular Plants of West-central Montana
• Field Guide to the Biological Soil Crusts of Western US Drylands (Lichens and Bryophytes)