Subject: [Tweeters] musings on RBA
Date: Jan 31 10:23:46 2009
From: Gary Bletsch - garybletsch at yahoo.com


Dear Tweeters,

As I understand it, Swedish birders were using a sophisticated pager system around the turn of the present century. In 2002, I had the pleasure of birding around Stockholm with a fellow who was one of the original handful of Swedish birders on that pager system.

Here's how it works, or worked, as I understand it. Each birder carries a pager around. Upon finding a "good bird," the birder would input a code. It would essentially consist of a long series of digits. For example, the first four digits might be the species. The second group of digits could be the location, the next the time and date of sighting, and the next would tell who the person was that made the observation. I don't remember the exact sequence, or whether there were other data involved, but the system allowed all its users to get immediate updates on any good birds found by any of the members of the group.

I think the fellow I birded with was "number seven." He was modest about it, but I think he was proud to be one of charter members, so to speak. He checked the gizmo a few times while we were birding, but nothing cool turned up within striking distance of Stockholm that day.

I believe that other countries in northern Europe have similar systems. Britain, Finland, and Holland, I believe, all have or did have one. For all I know, such systems might even have become unified by now. Wouldn't that be cool?

Or, maybe those systems are already obsolete.

Technology is certainly not my forte. I carried a pager in the 1980's, when they were very simple devices. In 2009, I cannot imagine all the possibilities for this kind of system. Since cell phones have now co-opted the functions of earlier devices, such as pagers, electronic diaries, Rolodexes, answering machines, and even cameras, it would seem that setting up a network like the earlier birders' pager system would be a natural for the cell phone. Such a product could be tailored so that people with other interests could adapt it for their purposes--for example, shop-a-holics interested in finding bargains, and so forth. It might not have to rely on the cumbersome entry of arcane digits, either.

Although I'd love it if it were based on 4-letter codes--boo-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Please excuse the vague, abstract nature of these musings. I am not a laptop owner, and really don't want to start carrying a computer in the field. I just got a cell phone for the first time, and barely know how to use it! Even so, sometimes I wish I could still phone the BirdBox, or check Tweeters in the field.

How many times have I come home on a Sunday evening, with the weekend over and the workweek looming, only to find that there was a really cool bird just two miles from where I was birding that day!

Yours truly,


Gary Bletsch ? Near Lyman, Washington (Skagit County), USA ? garybletsch at yahoo.com ? ?