Guide to Birds of North America version 3.9.3.0

Reviewed by Robert Pritchett

Creator: Pete Thayer

Thayer Birding Software

809 Walkerbilt Road, Suite #4 

Naples, FL 34110-1511

http://www.thayerbirding.com/

Released for Mac – December 3, 2007, For MS Vista, July 31, 2007

$85 USD.

http://www.thayerbirding.com/dnn/Default.aspx?tabid=608

Includes: The Birder’s Handbook

Requirements: A desire to do birding. Internet access. Mac OS X 10.3 or later, 256MB RAM, 750 MB hard drive space, CD-ROM to install.

ISBN: 1887148914

Strengths: Ability to find birds by location, size, habitat, color, field marks, group or even sound. Links to more info included online.

Weaknesses: Forum registration requires copy/paste of source code in Safari, since the .aspx site doesn’t play nice with Mac OS X 10.5.2 Leopard. Male-centric photos (few female bird photos).

Introduction

With this app installed on your computer, along with the RavenLite app, wecan view over 2,700 color photos, see 90 video clips, hear over 700 songs and learn how to identify 925 birds that have been seen in the continental U.S. and Canada. We can also can take over 700 quizzes. We can identify unknown birds by color, size, habitat, location and even by sound and compare two birds side-by-side. We can keep a record of the birds we have seen. We can add your own comments, photos and Internet links to each bird.   

We can learn more than just bird identification - with the Birder's Handbook (included in electronic format) we can learn about diet, nesting behavior, raising young and more for over 650 breeding birds. There are also 250 essays on birds, bird behavior and famous ornithologists.

What I Learned

We can also watch action videos of birds in their habitat, from the Guide to Birds of North America and we can download to iPods or MP3 players. The Birder’s Handbook however is loaded with essays and lists bird biologists in 247 articles. With the included Raven Lite 1.0 software from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, I can listen to and see spectrograms of many of the bird’s calls (at least 708 of them) and do recordings as a taste for going to the Pro version –

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/raven/Raven.html

For example, by using this software, I now know what a humming bird call sounds like of one that is in my part of the state of Washington (I can choose from among 478 birds in the list).

If I so desire, I could make screen savers that sing.

I can also list similar species and birds of the same family. I can also find common names of birds in French, German or Spanish as well as English. Lists can be shown with common or scientific names and in alphabetical or taxonomic order.

The forums can be found at http://www.thayerbirding.com/dnn/Forums/tabid/599/Default.aspx.

As of this review, I had to copy/paste the source code to be able to register using Mac OS X 10.5.2. I’m sure it is a security issue, since the site is .aspx technology.

There are links to the top 25 birding sites, Wildbirds, Cornel Lab on Ornithology, BirdSource, Project FeederWatch, Backyard Birds, the American Birding Association, a checklist by state and province and a free birding newsletter.

Conclusion

I’m excited that there is such software available for the Mac that works with Leopard. The quizzes are great, the maps are wonderful and the sounds are pristine. The additional info associated with the included electronic books are a great thought and so is the included Ravin spectrograph software. It is obvious this app was developed by a bird-lover.

Now I’m going to go bug the cat and see if he can get excited about hearing the birds on the computer and seeing them as well.