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| Hi-tech bird lovers |
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A few volunteers, who like to count birds, are taking steps to protect them using modern technology, writes Meredith Cohn
Between dawn and dusk on a frigid day, Hal Wierenga and fellow birders combed greater Annapolis, Maryland, US, for canvasback ducks, double-crested cormorants and dozens of other species as part of the 110th annual Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count. And they relied on nothing more than binoculars, decades of experience and an uncommon level of hardiness.
Despite a century of tradition, the count — and birding in general — is headed for change as some watchers abandon the worn pages of their field manuals and pencils for things decidedly more modern: electronic field guides and social networking sites.
Birders have armed themselves with iPhones that give them ready access to images, maps, sounds and websites such as eBird.com and mdosprey.org to record their latest sightings in real time.
Some conservationists believe more and faster information is contributing to a rise in the popularity of birding among younger people.
Wierenga remains on the fringe of the tech phenomenon. He sometimes uses a cellphone to tell other birders of special finds they may want to come see. Though others in his group frequent birding websites, and enjoy modern scopes and digital cameras, Wierenga discourages real-time technology because he doesn’t want birders leaving their posts to see someone else’s find.
“I’ll crack the whip if I need to,” he said with a chuckle.
But elsewhere, birders such as Joan Townsend, a 49-year-old Washingtonian, are more fully embracing technology. She’s been watching birds for 17 years and started using iBird on her iPhone this summer. It helps her identify birds and means she doesn’t have to carry a paper field manual all the time.
The application is not faster than the book but is more convenient, she says. And because it has recorded bird calls, it’s become welcome on her Nature Conservancy walks, where others enjoy hearing the sounds.
“I’m told that in some seasons, male birds get territorial, and if I play a bird sound from the iPhone, it can make the male bird come and see who is invading. I haven’t done that yet,” Townsend said.
She logs onto mdosprey.org, a site for Maryland birders that sends her alerts about what birds are where. That helps her plan outings, she said.
“I take the bird book when I go birding, but I have the iPhone with me all the time,” said Townsend, who frequents Assateague, Chincoteague, Ocean City, Sandy Point and Little Bennett Regional Park to look for birds.
And she may become the norm.
Justin Campfield, a spokesman for Audubon Guides, says the group now offers 13 electronic applications, including mobile field guides for birds, trees, mammals and wildflowers, for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. He wouldn’t release sales figures but said they are gaining in popularity for year-round birding.
The tech trend is still relatively new, but Campfield believes it is attracting a younger audience for a hobby long dominated by older people. A recent mobile advertising company survey showed that 84 per cent of iPhone users and 93 per cent of iPod Touch users are younger than 50.
As for the bird count, Delta Willis, a spokeswoman for the Audubon Society, says more preliminary results are coming via Twitter.
Geoff LeBaron, Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count director, said his family was the last in New England to get a cellphone and prefers tradition to technology. He said that’s what makes the count, which ends today, so effective. Tweets from the field could distract other counters and negatively affect results.
He does concede there are benefits to technology for birding. New applications allow travellers to visit new places and learn immediately what kinds and where the most interesting birds are. There are maps to guide them, and recorded sounds as well as pictures to help with identification.
Perhaps the most useful technology so far has been digital cameras, LeBaron said. Documenting rare and interesting birds can be done in extra detail by just about everyone. And, LeBaron agrees, technology could be luring more and younger people important to keep the practice going.
“While tech has long been used by bird researchers, bird hobbyists seem to be jumping on board lately,” Schwedler said. “Several preserve managers for the Conservancy have recently been reporting the use of hand-held phones, phone applications, and social networking technology by bird-watchers to record and share information about bird sightings. This electronic information-sharing happens at lightning speed and has been resulting in the somewhat surprising juxtaposition of older birders flocking to a preserve waving iPhones in response to a Tweet about the sighting of a rare bird.”
Back in Sandy Point State Park in Annapolis, Wierenga, who is 65 and has been on 54 bird counts, was doing things the old-fashioned way.
So was his crew. Fellow birder David Mozurkewich used his wits and his scope to count more than 1,000 gulls before dawn.
Wierenga had been looking for hawks, which usually sit in trees but were hiding from the fierce wind. With nine of his 10 regions reporting, a group of several dozen people saw 96 species and tens of thousands of birds.
MCT News Service |
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