The Technology of Birding
10/4/15
By David Brown
Watching birds is in its simplest form a low-tech pursuit, but modern technology allows birders to quickly identify birds and report rarities.
What happens when someone finds a rare bird? The most important first step is to document the bird as well as possible. This usually involves photographing the bird. A digital camera with telephoto lens is ideal, but taking a photo by holding your cell phone camera up to your binoculars or spotting scope, known as digiscoping, is another option. Being able to snap a photo of a bird and zoom in to get a close look is a huge advantage that wasn't possible before the advent of cheap digital photography. Any relevant notes about the bird and its behavior can be recorded. In the past this would have been done by writing in a notebook, but the notes app on a smartphone works just as well. For identification of a bird, field guides are available as smartphone apps, rather than having to carry a book.
The rarity of the bird determines whether to report it at a local, state, or national level. Facebook is one popular way to report birds, especially since it is very easy to upload photos as quick proof that the sighting is accurate. Email listservs are also popular. When someone sends an email to a listserv, everyone who is a member will receive the email. There are also rare bird alert text groups that work in a similar manner. Of course there is also the old-fashioned method of calling your friends to make sure they know of the sighting, though today that can often be done from a cell phone while watching the bird, avoiding the moral dilemma of deciding whether to stay and watch or leave to notify others. These methods allow word to spread quickly so other who want to see the bird can get there.
Most birders report their sightings to eBird, which is a project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Each user has a personal account to submit bird sightings. Using a smartphone app, you can keep your bird list and then submit it to eBird while still in the field. It will even use the phone's GPS to get a precise location. You can sign up for eBird email alerts so when someone else reports a rare bird or a bird that you need for that county or state it will send an email with all the information, including the location which you can then click to open in an app such as Google Maps to get turn-by-turn directions.
This fall the Cape May Bird Observatory in New Jersey began entering data from their hawk watch and other counts in real time using a tablet and the results are immediately viewable to the public on a website.
Birding will always be as simple as looking through binoculars but technology is changing the way that sightings are documented and shared.
