There have been a number of postings about using GPS units for
birding. For those of you who want to know how the units can be used to
advantage, the following gives a brief description of one use. It is a
great toy, too!

Those of you who have gone on SAS field trips with Brenda Senturia
know her driver uses his Garmin 45 to record the Lat/Long of bird sightings
during the trip. What is not apparent is that promising birding Lat/Long
locations have been previously recorded during preview trips. Waypoints
from the preview trip are downloaded to DeLorme's Street Atlas USA. After
viewing the map, the best birding location waypoints, and route, are
selected and then uploaded to the Garmin unit. This route is then followed
for the field trip. After the formal trip, the waypoints are downloaded to
the map. As a consequence, we have maps of the field trips that Brenda has
conducted, which include preview and formal trip waypoints. The GPS unit is
not really needed to get to most popular birding sites, but if you want to
relocated a nesting site on a forest service road, for example, GPS is the
way to go. If you want to tell a friend how to get to a rare bird site,
print a map from the Street Atlas.