Birding is a great
relaxing way to enjoy the outdoors. Birders are great people and are
always ready to help a beginning birder. I started bird watching in
1997. I attend about 8 Audubon field walks per year enjoying them immensely
for the social and educational aspects of birding. I normally limit
my outings to 3 - 5 hours. I have MS and more than 6 hours can give me
extreme fatigue the next day. I consider myself
to be a low intermediate skilled birder.
My favorite field guide is PETERSON
FIELD GUIDES - Western Birds .
It has little arrows on key features that help ID the birds. My second favorite one is , NATIONAL
AUDUBON SOCIETY- The SIBLEY Guide to Birds . It would be
my favorite if it wasn't for its large
size. The illustration are tops. I use it allot at home.
I use
AviSys 5.0 software to record and enter my sightings onto my desktop computer. In the field I use a PDA, Palm V
loaded with
AviSys Palm software.
I also own AviSong software which allows automated bird calls training in association
with the PETERSON FIELD GUIDES - Western Bird Songs CD's. I also own the Peterson North American Birds - PETERSON MULTIMEDIA GUIDES
a CD to help learn bird identification by sight and sounds. I do not
recommend this CD as it is not very user friendly and is very old.
I enjoy the
Yahoo , SDBIRDS user group and occasionally post my sightings on it. I am also a member of
the Yahoo , INLANDCOUNTYBIRDS user group. This group covers mostly the Imperial Valley area in and
around the Salton Sea.
My favorite
professional bird leader is Bob Miller from Imperial California. His web
site is
http://www.southwestbirders.com/
My favorite
binocular is the , Leica 8x50 .
They have wonderful optics and incredible light gathering capability. The
price you pay is $$$ & weight. I use a shoulder harness which is the
only way to go when using heavy optics.
I currently do
not have a good spotting scope, but will probably buy a Televue 78 mm with 20 to
60 zoom Nagler eye piece and a camera adapter for my Nikon cp4500.
If you take up
birding I highly recommend joining your local Audubon Group. The San Diego
link is
http://www.sandiegoaudubon.org.
The National Link is
http://www.audubon.org/.
Field walks and events are posted at the Audubon sites, so in any area of the US
while traveling you can join a local Audubon field walk for free.