Lately, I've been falling in love with technology all over again. And it's all thanks to birding software. It was in the dead of December, right in the middle of my holiday grumpiness, that I first popped a birdwatching CD-rom into a computer. From the first recorded bird call, I was transported to a forest meadow in spring time, then a wetlands during Indian summer, then Cape Cod in August. It was an achy, sweet feeling. I wasn't really out in nature, but the recorded sounds and images evoked strong memories and a keen anticipation for spring.
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|  | Thayer's Birds of North American |
| Audubon's North American Birds |
| MicroWizard Bird Song Master |
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Now that we're heading into migration season, birding software offers a way to bone up and get ready for excursions to your favorite local viewing spots. They're a great way to study for a birding vacation to a new place. And they're an enjoyable way just to pass the time, midweek or at night. A birding techie can build skills, play games, look at beautiful photos and videos, read interesting articles: all about birds!
I looked over several packages to get a sense of how they could be used to hone birdwatching skills. I found they all helped make the user a better birder, and that they were fun besides.
Thayer's Birds of North America
Thayers Birding Software was my all around favorite product. You can tell this was put together by a real birdwatcher. This CD is a real treasure trove of material. The opening screen provides entry into six separate stand-alone sections."Birds of North America" is the centerpiece section. This is a true, multimedia reference with sound, image and text. Once you find what you're looking for, Thayer's provides a wealth of information on 925 species. However, I found the search and index features hard to use. "Birds of the World" is a reprise of "Birds of North America," but rather than an exhaustive survey, it's a a peak at some of the more interesting and colorful species found outside North America. The "Avian Jukebox" section allows you to compile a favorite listening list. You can access over 1,200 birdsongs, complete with chip notes on 695 of them. The CD even includes a sonogram tool for viewing your own recordings.
Moving on, you'll find a hypertext version of the Paul Ehrlich's venerable The Birder's Handbook, with 249 articles on bird behavior, natural history and ornithologists. As if this wasn't enough, Thayer's provides another reference section called the "Joy of Birding" which features web links, 100 birding hot spots, checklists for 63 states and provinces, a directory of birding clubs and associations, information for backyard birding, and a whole lot more.
Speaking of fun, Thayers quiz games are a blast. My favorite was an untimed flash card section, that brought up a photo of the bird and a list of multiple choices. You can take as long or as little time as you want making a selection. I found this was great practice using my paperback field guide. Ultimately, Thayer's is an enormous confidence booster. I surprised myself by how many birds I already knew, and found my identification skills increase with each session. Of course, identifying a static image on a computer screen is very different from dealing with the vagaries of the field. But the more you have in the back of your head, the quicker you can make real identifications.
This is a CD-Rom that really uses the main advantage of the medium: you can cram a lot of information onto a relatively small and cheap package. The six separate sections may not be integrated into a seamless whole, but I found it easy enough to find what I wanted. But what birder worth his or her salt doesn't enjoy doing a little searching around? Loose ends can be fun: everytime I go into this, CD I find something new and unexpected.
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| | Systems: Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT, Intel Pentium 90 processor |
| Requires: 16 MB RAM, SVGA display, high color video drives, 4x CD-ROM drive, MPC compatible sound card such as Soundblaster, 29 MB available hard drive space |
| Cost: $70; Available on CD-ROM |
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Aububon Society's Guide to North American Birds
The National Audubon Society Interactive CD-Rom Guide to North American Birds was the only software compatible with my home Macintosh (I had to evaluate all the others at work, enduring questioning glances from my boss Does he really need all that time to form an evaluation?.)
I'm a sucker for the opening of this CD-rom, which features a Quicktime video of birds flying over a marsh while New Age music whooshes from my computer speakers. (Listen, it beats error messages.) The Audubon program feels more like the work of a professional multimedia developer than a work by a dedicated birder slick interface, but not as textured as Thayers. And weak games.
I've always appreciated the integration of Audubon field guides. The range of the birds is made immediately clear through maps. And actual photos of the birds are shown, unlike Peterson's, the other famous guide, which relies on colored drawings. This integration and use of good photography is carried over to Audubon's CD-rom. A database of birds, with images and sounds, is melded together into an easy to use field guide. I liked the search feature, which allows you to narrow the scope by easy to use ids: range, color, habitat. Peterson-style arrows of distinguishing features for individual species would be helpful. But all in all, Audubon is a good reinforcement, and possibly introduction, into the thought process of using a field guide. Problem is, you're probably not in the field. And I don't believe a CD-rom on a laptop could ever be as fast, or discreet, as a well-thumbed paper field guide. So if you want to use this product to build skills, you don't have as many options as with Thayers.
The one game on the CD really a timed test was more nerve-wracking then fun. I'm not one of those people who enjoys watching a clock run down, especially when I'm relaxing at home. The location finder was fun and easy to use, but limited.
Audubon doesn't touch birdwatching gear, especially the vital issue of optics. The articles on ecology are bone-dry, with all the excitement of a dead starling. If you want to spend some time reading about birds, there are scores more interesting books. And if you're trying to turn your kids on to birding, the articles will probably turn them off. Unless they're already hooked, and then if your kid is anything like me at the age, they might actually appreciate the cut and dry presentation of facts.
Don't get me wrong. I've spent hours at home looking at photos of birds, listening to their sounds, comparing ranges, reading details about their habits. But if Thayers worked on my Mac, I would definitely be using that. (Indeed, the prospect of using Thayer's at home is tempting me to spring for a copy of SoftWindows.)
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| | Systems: Windows 3.1 or 95, DOS 5.0, 25MHZ 386dx or faster (486dx recommended) |
| Requires: 8 MB RAM, VGA/SVGA, 640 x 480 pixel screen, 256 color monitor, mouse, MPC compatible sound card such as Soundblaster, 15 MB available hard drive space |
| Cost: $32; Available on CD-ROM |
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Birding by Sound
For me, one of the hardest skills to master is identifying birds by their sounds. I am always in awe of expert birdwatchers who can hear a faint chee-reep and definitively pronounce"Red-Eyed Vireo." Text can only give you a clue about bird sounds what does "chee-reep" really sound like? There are scores of commerically available sound-recordings of birds. But if you want to learn bird sounds, MicroWizard Bird Song Master is a focussed skills builder. This software, distributed on a floppy disk, was designed to be used in conjuction with either the Peterson's or Audubon's audio CD. Bird Song Master acts as a database interface, calling up and rearranging bird sounds according to your specifications. You can compile a list of bird sounds to memorize, much like memorizing vocabulary when learning a foreign language. You can group similar bird sounds together, so that you can fine tune your sense of distinctions (ah yes, that warbler has a slightly deeper pitch). The program's developers are even available to make custom versions for local birding groups.
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| | Systems: Windows 3.1 or higher |
| Requires: CD-ROM Drive |
| Cost: $50; Available on floppy disk |
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If you're already an expert on bird sounds and want to expand your skills, the American Birding Association's (ABA) Bird Song Reference Chart is handy. This is a list of western hemisphere birds keyed to commercially available sound recordings. The list of referenced recordings is fascinating in its specificity: A Bird Walk at Chan Chich, Bird Songs of Lake Tahoe, Voices of Costa Rican Birds: the Caribbean Slope. If you want to move beyond being an expert birder into being a world-class one, this little pamphlet is a must.
None of these products beat actually being outdoors, with binoculars and muddy bird book in hand. But to their everlasting credit, they were meant to complement that experience, not replace it. For my money, Thayers is the best all around package. But if you just want to learn bird sounds, Bird Song Master is a focused product that does one thing exceedingly well.
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