Natural History Photographs


About the search tools

The search facility has two modes, basic and advanced. The basic search mode is accessed via the magnifying glass in the menu bar, while the advanced search mode has its own page, under 'Find' in the menu bar. In basic search mode, you can search for photos of a species (though a more inclusive taxon is also allowed). You may search on scientific names, or on common names in English, Nederlands (Dutch), Deutsch (German), Français (French), Svenska (Swedish), Norsk (Norwegian), Italiano (Italian), and Español (Spanish).

For more complex searches, you need to use the advanced search tool.

Advanced search
In the advanced search mode, you can search for species, locations, months & years, and keywords; you may also combine various criteria, such as e.g. taxon and location. Combining various criteria allows you you to search for rather specific selections, such as all butterflies I photographed in France from May to July. You may also choose which part of the website you want to have searched: the systematic part (anything under animals/fungi/plants), or the selections part (under themes, ecological interactions and travels). You can make this choice with the field 'Show.'

There are three options for the output: photos, a list with links, or a plain list. If you search for a higher taxon (tribe or more inclusive), and choose for links, the output also contains references to pages dedicated to taxa above genus level. If you want to see only links to species within the higher taxon, you can tick the check box below the taxon field.

Conventions of usage:

  • Search is case insensitive.
  • Search terms are separated by a space.
  • Use quotation marks for composite terms, as in "the Netherlands" (not needed though for scientific species names).
  • To exclude spurious results because the letters making up a search term can also occur in a larger word, use quotation marks. E.g. in searching for photos from the French area Lot, to exclude spurious results such as photos with 'Lotus' in the caption, write "Lot". Similarly, to find just the Früher Schilfjäger rather than all names containing Früher, type "Früher Schilfjäger".
  • You may search for scientific names, or for common names in English, Dutch, German, Swedish, Norwegian, French, Spanish and Italian. However, if you use this option then please realize that many species have no common names.