Identify a photo

Upload a photo and see what it might be, with the field marks behind each suggestion.

Picture matching needs an account

Identifications cost money to run, so they are tied to a member account with a daily allowance. Creating one is free and takes a moment.

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What happens to your photo. When you ask for an identification, the image, the month and a location rounded to about a kilometre are sent to the identification service. Your name, your email and your exact coordinates are not. Nothing is sent until you press Identify.

What it is good at

Distinctive adults in a decent photograph: a Red-tailed Hawk, an Eastern Gray Squirrel, a milkweed in flower. Common North American species are its strongest ground.

What it will not do

It will not pretend a photograph settles something it cannot. Empidonax flycatchers, immature gulls, most sedges and grasses, and a great many fungi genuinely cannot be taken to species from one image — in those cases you get a genus with low confidence and a note saying why, which is the honest answer rather than the satisfying one.

It will never tell you whether something is safe to eat or handle, and no identification from a photograph should be used that way.