John&Jacq~s Garden

Garden Bugs & Related Creatures in the Animal Kingdom

Gardens and bugs including insects, spiders, butterflies, birds, etc. are made for each other! One can’t exist without the other and all form a fundamental part of our ecosystem and are so essential for our existence! And we are absolutely fascinated and astounded by all the abundant nature life that inhabits or visits our garden everyday!

Thus, we have compiled here a list of our favorite internet sites related to such bug and wildlife wonder with valuable information, image galleries and more links, to our absolute amazement and enjoyment! (Links will be updated periodically)

BUGS (including insects, spiders and others)

• Iowa State University Entomology Index – The most comprehensive directory and search engine of insect-related resources on the Internet! Don’t forget to explore their entomolgy image gallery!
• BugGuide.Net – An online community site with user-submitted images for identification (only for United States and Canada). Provides an awesome IMAGE gallery of insects, spiders and their kin with taxonomy and lots more other information such as their life history etc. Included are other useful internet resources with more insect photos! A very helpful and friendly community that even entertained insects’ ID requests from me in Malaysia!
• What’s That Bug? – An awesome site filled with fantastic bug images grouped in alphabetical order with lots of information, advice and help in bug ID! A fun and educative site to explore! I first landed on this site when googled for ‘walking stick’ images and was I flabbergasted and stupefied! I’ve never known that such beautiful creatures exist!
• Spiders of Australia – Very informative and educative site with lots of fabulous spider images and spider information.

BUTTERFLIES & MOTHS

• Butterflies of Singapore – Presents a photo gallery of magnificent butterfly images, life histories, tips on watching and photographing butterflies, and checklist, etc!
• Butterflies, Moths & Caterpillars of North America – Awesome photo gallery of a huge collection of these beauties. Simply marvelous! Another astounding site to explore is by the North American Moth Photographers Group.
• Tom Murray’s Moth Caterpillars Photo Gallery – Another spectacular collection you wouldn’t want to miss! We were astounded indeed!
• Ianni Butterfly Enterprise – World’s most known and reliable supplier of superior quality preserved butterfly, moth and other insect specimens. Though, what most attracts me to the site is its display of more than 600 images of these bugs!
• British Butterflies – A photographic guide of butterflies in the UK!
• British Butterflies in the Garden – A lovely site that lists the kind of plants/flowers that can attract the various butterfly species to your garden, besides providing butterfly images with brief info wherever possible.
• Samui Butterflies – A pictorial guide of butterflies to be found on Koh Samui, an island off the east coast of Peninsular Thailand and elsewhere, by Les Day!

DRAGONFLIES AND DAMSELFLIES (Odonata)

• Asia Dragonfly Community – Awesome site that provides an amazing database of Asian odonata photos (3233 images of 2,043 Asian species), and much more – you just have to explore and be fascinated!

BIRDS

• Oriental Bird Club – Provides an amazing database of Oriental bird images (23,000+ images of 2,400+ asian species) from the Oriental Region, complete with common and scientific names and a little extra info on every bird captured. Whilst happily browsing recently, I managed to nail the identity of my garden visitors, the white-browed yellow-vented bulbuls.
• The Birds of NUS – A one-stop guide to about 61 species of feathered creatures that have visited the Kent Ridge Campus of National University of Singapore. Provides a comprehensive description of them and other useful information.
• Bird Forum Opus Largest birding community online! Packed with a great gallery of bird images which can be viewed by alphabetical order or by location. Or use the seach button to locate your bird from their huge database of more than 10,000 bird species of which half have a photo. Also, included bird songs if you’re curious!
• BirdGuides – Featuring more than 2,000 bird species in British, Irish and Western Palearctic regions with fantastic photos and information! Great for bird identification.
• British Garden Birds – Very interesting site with an encyclopaedic bird guide of 200 species, and lots of informative and educative read on matters related to bird biology, feeding, nesting, distribution, migration, etc. Its photographic index of birds will be useful for identification purpose too.

FAUNA (ALL IN ONE)

• Museum Victoria – A bioinformatics website, offering an absolutely extensive resource on the Victorian Fauna, particularly the fascinating and unique Australian butterflies, snakes, frogs, mammals and lizards. A must-explore for all nature lovers and interested parties seeking info and answers.
• The Outdoor Enthusiast’s Guide to Bugs – A comprehensive site that presents various links to a further wealth of information about the bugs and the like.
  (Note of appreciation: Thanks to Ms. Christina for sharing this fabulous link with us).

Last edit: December 16, 2015

Tags: nature links