Here's a little something neat I found on flickr.  Like most big internet repositories, flickr has had a virtual community of photographers that have sprung up around it.  One way it facilitates this is through "groups", also called "pools".  A group is simply a collection of photos that you can submit your photo to.  Typically groups have some sort of theme (like landscapes, cities, cats, clouds, water, or highly specific stuff like "Fitchburg, Massachusetts").  Some groups are intended to help you become a better photographer, in that if you submit a photo, you must critique the N photos that were submitted before yours.  This guarantees input from other people which can be very useful if you are trying something new.

But one of the most interesting groups I've found is called ID Please.  This is a group for submitting photos you took of things you can't identify.  The group members have specialized knowledge, and if they recognize the thing you posted, they'll tell you what it is.  The primary submissions seem to be pictures of flowers, insects, and birds.  But I have seen pictures of all sorts of things go by and get identified, airplanes and vehicles, antiques and apparati, cityscapes and locations, even one person who had taken a picture of something on the ground from the window of an airplane at high altitude and wanted to know what it was.

Since I discovered this group I am rapidly becoming familiar with the local plants and animals in my area.  In exchange for their help, I try to offer information on pictures of birds that are submitted to the group.

All in all, it's pretty neat!  If you've got a picture of something you can't identify, perhaps you should upload it to flickr and submit it to the ID Please group.