People often think of "biology" as happening out in the forest, in a swamp, in the ocean, or some other "wild" place. Yet there's biology around us everyday, whether you live in a suburb, a rural community, or even a big city.

From time to time I get reminded of this when I read an article or part of a textbook that talks about the biology of people's backyards. In fact, one of my favorite episodes of National Geographic (science geek alert!) is called "The Savage Garden", starring Leslie Nielsen, which focuses on the biology of...you got it: the backyard.

Birds

Insects

Critters

Pets

When I taught high school biology, I decided to put together an enrichment activity for my students where they could get points for doing surveys of their own backyards. Some photos, a little research into the biology of the critters they were getting pictures of, and all of this would get added to a huge bulletin board and card file in our classroom. I thought it would be good to have a half dozen or so animals already done to get everyone started, so I began surveying my own backyard...and I got hooked! (science geek alert!) For those folks who don't think there are enough critters to keep a project like that going, I'm up to around a thousand species on the site here (give or take a hundred) as of January 2027, and the number continues to grow. If you start looking for them, I have no doubt you'll see many of these critters in the shrubs, trees, grass, and flowers of your own backyard as well.

I've created some photo albums to share some of these backyard critters with my students, family, and friends. The albums listed above are photos that I took when I got hooked myself on taking pics around my yard. If you click on the thumbnails in those albums, you will see a larger 1600x1200 pixel version, some of which are just ok, but some of which make really cool desktop backgrounds. So, I cordially invite you to feed your inner nerd or nature muse and browse the photo albums above and find some of the critters who are living in your own backyards -- many of which you probably pass by every day without even realizing it!