Birding software, birding booksBurt,

The software (esp. Thayer's) does three things for me: 1) Its capability of showing two different birds side by side has been really helpful on occasion as I have struggled to discern differences, 2) It has a multiplicity of poses and settings for some birds, and 3) Its ability to play calls for the bird whose picture you are looking at. Nothing substitutes for the books, but the software is helpful, and a nice addition.

Diane Bagues
Milwaukie, Oregon
dbagues at earthlink.net

----- Original Message -----
From: Guttman, Burt
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 10:25 AM
Subject: Birding software, birding books


I keep being amused and puzzled when I read a lot of requests on Tweeters or Birdchat for information about whether some birding software does this or that or the other thing. I grew up looonnnng before the computer era. I have books. The books have information about such things as distribution and migration patterns, if that's what interests me, and of course they have fine paintings of books for identification purposes. Yes, they go out of date as patterns change, but so does software. I wonder whether anyone who uses the software can explain why it's so much better than having books--aside from our society's digital compulsion and its being the In Thing, while books are now an Out Thing. I use my computer extensively for writing--word-processing programs have improved and simplified my writing far more than I could ever have imagined--and I have used the computer for simple birding tasks, such as making lists and field notes, and recording my sightings of birds in this way. But what does complicated software about birds do that would make me want to buy it and spend my time fiddling with it?

Burt Guttman guttmanb at evergreen.edu
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505 360-456-8447
Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S.E., Olympia 98503
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20030107/a0bf61a1/attachment.htm