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Subject:

Handheld birds

From:

Jason

Reply-To:

Jason

Date:

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 08:55:43 -0700

Hi All,
   
  Thanks for the heads up Monday about what could be expected at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.  I went there with a small film crew to demonstrate National Geographic's "Handheld birds" electronic field guide for the Home & Garden Cable channel ("Gotta have it -Tech Toys!").  It should air some time this summer.  The guide was actually much cooler than I thought it would be.  I'm not a techy at all, but the having a guide that weighs a fraction of a book is nice.  second, there seems to be more information on each bird than in most field guides.  Probably the best thing is having bird calls for almost all the species.  I'm not good at matching a bird song to text like kweewertp kwquis kwquis pert.  It's a lot easier to hear a bird call and match it to real audio - especially not having to carry around extra audio equipment.  
   
  Some of the draw backs are that it is a bit hard viewing the screen in strong sunlight. I also like having a whole page of bird illustrations of similar birds to compare, and with handheld birds you only get one image per page (although they have a useful "similar species" link that is helpful).  I found that after a bit of practice I could move from bird to bird surprisingly quickly.
   
  Overall, I think it is a really useful product.  Having a compact, lightweight field guide that also has bird calls is really useful.  Here's a link to their website: http://www.handheldbirds.com/
   
  Thanks again for the heads up about what we should have seen at Kenilworth Gardens (it was really bad - hardly any ducks around - no herons, and most raptors were soaring high).  I tried to get some good birds for the show, but we had to make due with a nicely perched Osprey, and a hooded Merganser at 500 yrds. Everything else was either absent or too hard to film.
   
  Cheers!
   
  Jason Berry
  Washington DC

 
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