While driving around a couple of days ago looking for the Gyrfalcon that had been seen south of Monroe, I saw a few groups of people obviously doing the same thing. It had been reported on Tweeters. Some of them I knew from meetings on the road, others I hadn't seen before. While driving I wondered what I would do if I ran into the Gyr. Would I watch for awhile, and then go try to find the other groups, would they do the same for me?

I guess the classic dilemma.

I've heard of people setting up in advance to call other people, that they knew were in the area looking, on their cell phones. That doesn't work for people that I don't know or people that I know but don't know are in the area. I'm guessing that in the future, you can get that now, everyone will be connected to the internet all of the time and will be able to follow bird finds easier. But what will work now?

>From the little research I've done, Twitters might work. You can set up groups of interested people and send messages to the whole group. You can join different groups and you can turn off or on which group you want to accept messages from. Example could be Marymoor Park. Anyone that had joined this Twitter group would receive txt messages from any other member that was sending messages about birds in the area. When you go to the Waterville Plateau area you could receive messages from that group. You can send messages directly to one person or the group. You can also turn off all messages. I think you would have to set up the group you want to access before you left home, easier done on a computer.
This would only be of value if people actually used the service. What do you think?



Gregg Thompson
Lake Forest Park
Gregg_Thompson_ret at yahoo.com



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