Progress in the Digital Age

Common Goldeneye (immature male)

The digital age is such a exciting and rewarding time to be involved in birding. Great strides have been made in cameras, enabling even a beginner to take good close-up photos of birds.  The Internet now provides amazing tools to accumulate huge masses of  information on bird populations and migration. A world wide data base called eBird is probably the best example of the use of the Internet to collect and share information.  In the past year they have made it extremely easy to post and share photographs.  My volunteer time here at Cattail Cove State Park has piqued my awareness of the gigantic progress that has been made to birding.  Today, Arizona State Parks installed a link for eBird's Illustrated Checklist at Cattail Cove State Park on the park's web page. You can now look at all the species that have been reported,  bar graphs of the observations, and most importantly photos.  For example by looking at this Illustrated Checklist, and checking on Common Goldeneyes, you can note the latest observation, the bar graph for the times it has been seen, and in this case, photos of adult males, females, and immature males, in order to learn the differences. Click here for the Illustrated Checklist for Cattail Cove State Park.