The Nemesis Bird » Bird Websites

Birding archives: predictions from 1994

Drew — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:05:10 +0000

I recently received about 15 years of old Birding magazines and in reading through them I came across an article in the February 1994 issue with predictions for technology advances in the next 25 years of birding. It is now 15 years after the article was written so I thought it would be neat to look at what has come true so far and what is still just a dream. Predictions are in the text boxes with a bit of analysis below it.

Optics were not expected to improve significantly, except for the addition of electronic gadgets like audio/video recorders and stabilization.

These gadget laden optics have certainly hit the market, but usually in lower quality optics and have not been widely adopted for use in birding. I have seen Canon’s stabilized binoculars featuring 12x and 15x magnification used at hawkwatches but only occasionally as the optics don’t match up to the Swarovski and Zeiss binoculars hawk watchers are fond of. There are also binoculars with cameras built in but the binoculars are subpar and the cameras too gimmicky to record anything useful. Zeiss has now introduced an eyepiece for their scope that can take images without any additional attachments. The RememBird (right) is an audio recorder that fits on your binoculars and allows you to record field notes as well as bird songs and play them back. So, there have been advances in the gadgets that couple with birding optics, but they have not reached widespread usage at this point.

The real advances were predicted to be around the devices we would carry into the field with us. Electronic field guides no bigger than a Golden Guide would provide users with complete text and plates for 200 bird guides. Also, multiple vocalizations, including all songs, flight calls and contact calls would be available for instant comparison. Going even further, it was predicted that this device could identify the song of an unseen bird for you.

We are almost there. From the National Geographic Handheld Birds for Palm to iBird Explorer (at left) for the iPhone and Windows Mobile platforms, we have very portable bird guides. A basic version of Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds is also available on the iPhone. Unfortunately, we still have a while to wait until either of these provide the complete text and plates from 200 bird guides, but with internet access to sites such as Birds of NA Online from the iPhone, there is a plethora of information available. Loading up any iPod with a whole variety of songs, flight calls and other bird noises is now possible, assuming you have all the CD’s. The software birdJam, has made it simple to organize Stokes Field Guide to Bird Song CD’s for quick access on an iPod. We are still waiting for a small device that can identify bird song, but one recent attempt was the Song Sleuth, which is now out of production. They are planning on releasing a new design at some point.

Listservs and other websites for sharing sightings were predicted to become widespread.

Listservs and websites for sharing sightings have all been around for quite a while at this point. You can access all the birding listservs at BirdingOnThe.Net. The real growth recently has been in the numbers of websites devoted to birders sharing their sightings. eBird is an early example, but other sites devoted more towards listing such as Birdstack have popped up. A twitter-based sightings site, ChirpTracker, provides instant bird sightings. With services such as twitpic for mobile phones, birds can be photographed and sightings shared in seconds. There is even a map-based site, Aviatlas, that provides info on birding sites worldwide, with info on yearly bird occurences.

Many of the predictions in the Birding article have proven accurate, with still 10 years left to go. It seems safe to say that is getting easier and easier to let others know about bird sightings. It will be interesting to see what the next 10 years bring.

New EBird Portal for Backyards (dendroica.blogspot.com)
Some Thoughts on Twitter and Birding (dendroica.blogspot.com)
Tweeting Birds (thedrinkingbird.blogspot.com)
C-Notes #12 – Great Reasons to eBird (birdfreak.com)

Bird Migration Forecast

Drew — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 01:39:00 +0000

Despite the much lauded launch of Cape May Bird Observatory’s, the most exciting thing for me on the site is the Mid-Atlantic Birding Forecast. When its updated, it provides a nice update on the potential weather conditions for movements of birds. David La Puma of woodcreeper.com is the guy who updates it and he has several years experience of looking at wind conditions and weather patterns to guesstimate flight conditions for both north and south migrations. I would recommend reading both these sites as well as Paul Lehman’s National Migration Forecast.

10 Ways to See more Birds

Drew — Thu, 24 May 2007 20:40:00 +0000

These aren’t backed by any guarantee, just what has held true from my experience. In no particular order I present you with 10 ways to see more birds.

Walk slower. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people walk past birds because they aren’t walking slow enough, giving the birds more time to move and become visible. There is always the urge to walk fast and cover more ground, but I have found that it is when I am moving the least that I see the most.

Spend more time outside. This one is obvious, there aren’t many birds that you can see from your house unless you have a spectacular feeder setup. Not everyone gets to spend two months outdoors counting hawks in the spring, but any chance you have to bird could be the time you find something really special.

Start earlier. Birds are most active in the first couple hours of the day, particularly during migration when they are landing at first light after a long night of flying. Being there when they are most active means there will be more to see. I spent many mornings at Garret Mtn Reservation in northern NJ this spring, and I always felt bad for the people who had just showed up at 8:30am, after I had already seen 17 or so species of warbler. By the time they showed up the warblers were not as active and their chances of seeing even 10 species was getting small.

Know the habitat. Birds can turn up anywhere. Birds can and will show up in backyards, waste water treatment plants and pretty much any other place that might not seem enticing. But this is more the exception than the rule. Spending time in high quality habitat that the birds are more likely to navigate towards will often allow you great observations of foraging behavior.

Learn to interpret radar. An excellent way to get an idea if new migrants will be arriving is to check the radar every night. My favorite sources are the National Weather Service and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Woodcreeper.com is a great website that posts nightly about migration conditions in New Jersey. Reading the past posts can be a great way to learn about how this tool can be used to predict where birds will be.

Look at the weather. Great birding days can come when the weather stalls the migration during the night, leaving lots of little birds to forage while they wait for better weather. Checking out some good locations during a light rain or after a rainstorm can be very productive.

Understand migration timing. For instance, in mid-May, you will want to head to spot to catch migrating warblers, in January find an unfrozen lake that might hold ducks and in August look for flooded fields or mudflats to see shorebirds migrating south. September can bring large Broad-winged Hawk flights, while November will be dominated by the Red-tailed Hawk. Knowing what to look for will point you towards the correct type of habitats to bird.

Learn birds calls, flight calls, chip notes, contact calls, noises their wings make, and anything else that gives their presence away. Birds communicate with their voices and it is the easiest way to find them. A well hidden bird can still be heard, giving you clues to its location as well as its identity. Chips and flight calls can help you identify the bird even if you only have a brief look at it. Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs is an excellent resource for the birds songs while Flight Calls of Migratory Birds is great for learning the flight calls. Any sounds you add to your repertoire will increase you skill and enjoyment of birding.

Bird with friends. Take a buddy or two along, even if they aren’t experts. An extra set of attentive eyes can go a long way in finding birds. I would have missed my life Boreal Chickadee if my interested but inexperienced friend hadn’t asked me, “Hey, whats that one? It looks different.” And if they are experienced birders, there is always the opportunity of learning new information or tricks to identify difficult birds.

Find migrant traps. There are certain places that, because of weather, topography or location, attract ridiculous concentrations of bird during migration. Point Pelee, High Island, Garret Mountain and Sandy Hook all come to mind. Some of these spots are bottlenecks, where the birds are all forced into a small area as they avoid flying across water until the last moment. Others, such as High Island and Point Pelee are the first places that birds reach after a long water crossing and so they land en masse, covering the trees as they desperately try to recover and find food. Visit a migrant trap like these and you could see flocks of warblers, tanagers, flycatchers and anything else that is flying.

I hope that these ten ideas help you to see more birds and if you have more helpful ideas, please leave them in the comments.

How to count birds

Drew — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 01:37:00 +0000

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Snow Geese flock, originally uploaded by topherous.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird site has just posted Bird Counting 101. For anyone who spends time out in the field watching large flocks, whether they are shorebirds, waterfowl or hawks knows that estimating flock size can be ridiculously hard. Just looking at the flock of Snow Geese above is overwhelming if you want to try and estimate the number of birds. Estimating sizes of flocks can be biologically important because it is an additional data set that can be more useful than just knowing whether a species is present or absent.

Cornell puts forth several different tips for counting in their first installment:

It is very important to write your observations down right away. No one can remember counts for 40+ species at a time. You will also end up second guessing yourself if you don’t write down what you see, particularly with the more common species, “Did I really see a Mourning Dove today or was that yesterdays walk?”
Be conservative in your estimates, making sure you are not counting birds twice.
For larger flocks, count a small portion of the flock and then extrapolate for the rest of the flock. For instance, count 10 birds in the flock and get a good idea of what that feels like. Then count the flock in 10 bird increments. This fall I was the counter on South Lookout at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, PA on the morning that a flight of over 5,000 Broad-winged Hawks migrated through. I mainly counted in 5 and 10 bird increments because the birds kept coming and coming and coming.

One fascinating fact from the article was that we have a hard time estimating flocks when they are flying in 3D space. If a large blackbird flock is 100 birds wide, 100 birds long, and 100 birds deep, that is 1,000,000 blackbirds! I have a hard time imagining that.

Check out the full article.

my flickr groups

Drew — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 15:18:00 +0000

Thought you should all know that there are some excellent uses for the photo sharing site, Flickr.
I just started two groups to document the variation of Song Sparrows and Fox Sparrows across North America. Because of the new mapping feature I hope to make it possible to quickly look at photos of all the different subspecies of these two sparrows. Its just starting so there are not many photos up now but if you see any, please invite them.