Underfoot vs Exsiccatae

Underfoot is a field guide for anyone who can't walk past a bug without stopping to look. Photograph an insect, spider, or under-a-rock critter, get an AI identification suggestion, and add an illustrated specimen card to your collection. HOW IT WORKS • Identify and compare. Check the suggestion against real reference photos, or choose a different species from the guide. AI can make mistakes. • Explore over 2,000 species. Browse insects, spiders, roly-polies, millipedes, snails, and other small creatures, with AI-generated illustrations in an ink-and-watercolor style. • Keep your own photos. See your find beside a reference image, enlarge either photo, and explore available life-stage images. • Collect wild finds. Save a species outside the bundled guide with an illustration generated for its card. • Know where to look. Read habitat tips, see seasonal suggestions, and explore nearby parks and trails. • Try something outside. Optional field activities and five observation walks help you slow down and notice more. QUIET BY DESIGN No public profiles, messaging, advertising SDKs, or cross-app tracking. Your nickname, collection photos, and field-activity progress stay on your device. Your collection is available offline. A parent should supervise a child's use. Photo identification requires your consent and an internet connection. Your selected photo goes through Underfoot's Firebase server to Google Gemini without your nickname or location. Anonymous identifiers, request counts, and technical diagnostics support the service; Google may retain requests for safety checks. Location is optional. See our privacy policy for details and deletion options. FREE & PRO Browse the field guide and collect your first 10 distinct species free. Underfoot Pro removes the collection limit with a monthly or yearly auto-renewable subscription. Prices are shown before purchase. Manage or cancel your subscription in your Apple account settings. Restore Purchases is available on the paywall. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://underfoot.web.app/privacy

Exsiccatae is a field journal that paints itself in. Photograph a bird, or listen for its song, and Exsiccatae names it entirely on your iPhone, then mounts it on the page like a pressed herbarium specimen. See a species once and it's a faint graphite ghost; see it again and again and it fills with hand-painted watercolour. Your life list becomes a living collection. IDENTIFY, ON YOUR DEVICE • Photo identification runs on-device. Nothing is uploaded, and it works offline. • A continuous listening session identifies birdsong from the microphone in real time, on-device, and the birds you hear settle onto the page as you listen. • Not sure? Pick the closest match, or search by name. The app is always usable. A JOURNAL THAT REWARDS RETURN • First sighting: a pencil underdrawing. By the fourth: a full watercolour plate. • A living collage grows with your collection. Pinch to lean in over the sheet. • "Expected nearby" shows the species recorded around you as ghost plates waiting to be found. REAL FIELD METHOD • Start a timed, located outing (Stationary, Traveling, or Incidental) matching eBird's protocols, with optional GPS distance for traveling counts. • Correct a finding's count, date, or notes; add your own photos and recordings. DONATE YOUR DATA TO SCIENCE • Export any outing in eBird Record Format and upload it yourself to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's eBird, the same dataset that trains birdsong models. Exsiccatae never submits for you; you always review and choose. YOURS, LOCAL-FIRST • No account. No cloud copy. Your photos, locations, recordings, life list, and journal live on your phone. Sharing a sighting or exporting an outing is always your explicit choice. Exsiccatae is a free portfolio project, built solo end to end. "Exsiccata" is a bound collection of dried, labelled specimens: a herbarium of everything you've seen.