North American Birds with Roger Tory Peterson

a short video of the master

himself, Roger Tory Peterson. This was filmed shortly before his untimely

death on July 28, 1996. He runs you through the options. These include:

Visual Category Guide–The gateway into the listing of birds

themselves.

Peterson Online–A shortcut to an excellent website.

Peterson’s Perspective–A marvelous ten minute movie in which he

gives a short course on finding and identifying birds.

Lifelist–Lifelists are familiar to serious birders. This included

package is a computerized means to database your personal record of birds

that you’ve observed.

Bird Finder–A quick and easy way to narrow down the search for

that little feathered guy that you saw eating suet at your

To paraphrase Ed McMahon, everything that you’d possibly want

to know about birds is on this disk! The easily learned interface

provides you with numerous information choices on each species, including

range, habitat, feeding, and Peterson’s indispensable field marks. There

is also a thumbnail which will become a 640 x 480 image of the bird when

you select “Field View.”

The Field Guides are the state of the art when it comes to birding. It’s

difficult to imagine how a printed book could possibly be any better. The

only problem that I have with them is being able to distinguish between,

for example, “notes are high and squeaky” (ruby-throated hummingbird) and

“shrill squeaky notes” (buff-bellied hummingbird).

Yes, bird calls are notoriously difficult to translate into printed form.

Here is where this program

and my hat is off to the engineers responsible.

Perhaps the most poignant recording, however, was not recorded by the

Cornell team. It is a fifteen second clip of the now extinct ivory-billed

woodpecker, which has become the symbol of what can happen when man’s relentless

drive to destroy the environment runs unchecked. This clip is from a movie

filmed in the 1940′s.

is immense, the interface is fairly

easy to learn, the program is extremely well designed. I really hateto give perfect scores, but this fine presentation rates one.

486 or higher IBM-compatible PC

8 MB RAM
Windows 3.1 or higher
SVGA display
Double-speed CD-ROM

drive
MPC-compatible sound card (22KHz, 16 bit)
20 MB hard drive

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