Abstract: This invention provides a social network for wildlife species observers, e.g. birders, to verify accuracy of observations made of wildlife in the field, and includes issuance of automatic rare species alerts when a sighting is determined to be rare, all via a web site.

Abstract: A field guide for identifying objects, particularly natural objects, includes a database of a collection of related objects and provides for step-by-step searching to identify an observed object, eliminating all non-matching objects at each step of the search. One by one, attributes or characteristics are selected, and a value entered under a selected attribute, the value describing the observed object. Once a value is selected, any further attributes which become irrelevant or redundant are eliminated as choices in the continuing search. In addition, once a value is selected, all values under further attributes, which values become irrelevant or redundant as choices, are eliminated from further searching. These features make the search more efficient and ensure against a null result. Values are in a plurality of data types which may include text, number values, color images, sounds, moving pictures and/or silhouettes representative of groups of items.