If you want to spend an afternoon birding the entire state of California from the comfort of your own home, plug in this URL and enjoy:
http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~jmorlan/
Joe Morlan, a member of the California Bird Records Committee (CBRC), has created a website, “California Birding Pages”, that sets a standard to which others aspire. If you are interested in taking his birding classes, or reading his publications, they are listed. Most fascinating is the California Birding section that lists the rare birds recently seen; when, where, and often with photographs. He also puts up two mystery photographs monthly and the birding community engages in debate as to the identification. The next month the discussion and answers are given and two more mystery birds are started. Here is a college class in bird identification for those who want it…and no tuition cost. One would do well to sit with a field guide and pen and enter all the unpublished and ‘known only to the best of the state’ identification marks that won’t make it into the next field guide for a decade or more. Talk about the cutting edge of identification! Another section is the CBRC, where photographs submitted to the committee as part of the documentation for state listed birds, are available to the public, captioned with the date and location. Some are from Inyo County! There also are audio and Los Angeles County sections. From the main page you can choose Links and see National, California, and Bay Area, CBRC, Other Birders’ Webpages, Bird Research, and Weather Webpages. There is a Search function if you know it is on Joe’s website, but not where. Treat yourself to cyber-birding. It is especially fun when it is too windy to bird Inyo County!
Owens Valley has a new listserve available to those who want to be kept informed of birding information, primarily sightings, from the valley. This replaces the telephone tree that was the quickest way to get rare bird alert information disseminated in the “old” days. If anyone on the list sees a bird that they don’t recognize, or that they do recognize and know that it is unusual for this area at this time of year, they can write up one post and everybody has access to the info as soon as they download their mail. It can not be emphasized enough that this kind of information needs to be put out as soon as physically possible, as a rare bird today is a gone bird tomorrow. Birders have been known to go out as the sun sets with spot beams to try to see the bird before it continues its migration that night. Not that any of us are that compulsive…but maybe we should let you speak for yourselves. This is not a replacement for the excellent Eastern California Bird Sightings Page by Chris Howard: http://www.wmrs.edu/birds. They serve two different but related functions. All good, interesting, and/or rare sightings should be put on Chris’s page so people can access them and learn about the local birds. This new listserve serves the function of a rare bird alert where time is of the essence as well as informing the recipients of miscellaneous birding information. It is an informal, irregular, and unmoderated list. If you are interested, please post us at tjheindel@qnet.com and we will put you on the list. You can withdraw at any time with no early withdrawal penalties, and there are no age restrictions to this offer!