What is a Lifelist?

A lifelist is a list of all species you have seen in your life. If you like fishing, you might start a lifelist of all the fish species you see. Many birders keep a lifelist as well. Having a lifelist is a great way to see how many species you have seen, when you saw them, and it is also a great way to track your progress.

How To Start a Lifelist

There are so many ways to keep a lifelist. I use eBird for my own. iNaturalist is also a good choice, and you can keep track of all the species of plants, animals, fungi, and microbiota that you observe. For both of these you need to sign up with an email.

If you do not want to sign up on a public site (which I do recommend if you can, since the data from your observations can help scientists) or if you are a kid without an email address or a parent of one, There are some other ways to keep a good lifelist. I will list all ways, physical ones like a journal and online ones including apps.