ABA Blog

Avian Interlopers

I hope that you enjoyed Noah Strycker's latest ABA Blog entry about camera trapping as much as I did.  Like Noah, I'm really enjoying the addition of motion-activated trail cameras to my bag of tricks. One of Forrest Gump's trademark quotes may well apply to camera trapping: "Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."  Just substitute "checking a trail camera memory card" for "Life" and I think the comparison is apt.

Anyway, in my last ABA Blog installment I mentioned that I was experimenting with a couple of Bushnell TrophyCam HD units, with a primary appeal being their ability to shoot motion-activated infrared movies at night.  One is still pointed at my Barn Owl box, and I repositioned the other to face down a log downed by beavers along Boulder Creek in Weld County, Colorado.  One issue I've noticed with the TrophyCam is that close subjects get overexposed by the IR illumination, even when it is set to low power.  Commentator Mike Patterson responded my post by suggesting I use copy paper as a diffuser, a technique he successfully used to build a virtual pitfall trap.  I liked the idea and it worked well in a short test but I was worried about the effect of wet weather on the paper over long unsupervised deployments.  Following the similar advice of the Camera Trap Codger I tried a homemade IR diffuser made of a thin sheet of closed-cell packing foam, which I taped to the inside of the metal security housing in front of the IR array.  I like the results- the bright levels I experienced center frame in earlier trials seem toned down and didn't require post-production adjustments to moderate the exposure.

I was expecting mainly mammals at this set, particularly the beavers that chewed the tree down, but in a week of camera trapping I had many birds join the mix.  I edited some highlights of the week into the video below to show the surprising diversity of mammals and birds that triggered the camera.  

This time I have a challenge for my faithful readers. In the comments section, list the bird & mammal species as they appear in the video (heard-only detections count, too!)  I know the audio isn't the greatest, but it does add an interesting aspect to each clip and I know you'll recognize several species making noise.  The first person to list them correctly will win a copy of Brian Kimberling's new novel, Snapper.  There is a birding theme in the story- here's the publisher's synopsis: 

A disastrous love affair between a man and a place, Snapper relates the brief career of a professional bird researcher in Southern Indiana. While conducting surveys and censuses of the same songbirds John James Aubudon painted in Indiana two hundred years ago – now in catastrophic decline – Nathan Lochmueller traverses a deeply dysfunctional society. He encounters an enormous concrete Santa Claus statue at a remote highway diner, white supremacists, the nation’s oldest Dial-A-Prayer service, Vietnam vets, and a discarded human thigh bone. And, of course, a woman who won’t stay true and a pick-up truck that won’t run.

Both a short story cycle, and a fully-formed novel, Snapper is a lyrical portrait of a rural wilderness and its very dark, very human, heart.

So good luck to any challengers for the prize!  Remember to list all of the mammals and birds in the movie including heard-only detections- first correct list in the comments gets the book.  Even if you don't want to play along, I hope you enjoy the little vignettes of streamside life captured by the trail cam (you might want to embiggen it by clicking the full screen icon in the lower left of the video frame.)

  

Night Moves

It is nice to see a pair of Barn Owls back for another season using a box I put up a few years ago in a friend's barn not too far from home.  I featured these barn owls in an earlier post, with still Infrared (IR) photos taken with a Reconyx Hyperfire HC500 trail camera.  I still really like that camera but wanted to try IR video, so over the winter I got a pair of Bushnell TrophyCam HD trail cameras, which can get non-disruptive video and sound recordings in addition to still photos.  So far I'm pretty happy with the results, and I'm excited to keep the video trail cam experimentation going through this spring.  My quick impressions of the TrophyCam HD vs. the HC500 so far:

Pros:

• Price is pretty good, at about $200 a pop you can get two of these with some nice accessories like steel security enclosures for the price of a single Reconyx.
• The video capability is a pretty cool deal, most excellent to see critters doing their thing at night and the sound recording adds a neat dimension.

Cons:  

• The Infrared illumination can be a bit harsh, overexposing close subjects in the center of the frame.  You can select a low-power LED setting to help but I'm currently trying to block out a few of the LEDs with tape to see if this situation improves.  
• The shutter trigger time is definitely slower than the Reconyx (not a surprise based on Trailcam Pro's testing data indicating 0.197 second trigger time for the HC500 vs. 0.596 second for the TrophyCam HD.)  For active birds such as Barn Owls flying into the box, even the Reconyx misses some shots but the TrophyCam misses many more.

Anyway, here's a test video put together from the owly barn:

  

And here's a bonus video using the Bushnell TrophyCam HD, shot near the barn next to Boulder Creek.  This one's mainly a mammal feature (watch for 5 different furry species) but there's at least one heard-only bird species to keep in pace with the theme of this blog...

 

PhoneSkope Mods

I'm pleased that several manufacturers are producing phone scoping adapters, giving folks a stable option for recording distant birds with their smart phone through their scope.  Meopta and Kowa have nice models that work well, and I'll have a detailed review of these coming up in the Feb. issue of Winging It.  Their main limitation for now seems to be that they are only made for iPhone 4/4s and only come in adapter diameters matching their scopes and bins (though they will work on other optics if the eyepiece diameter matches closely enough.)  

Another outfit, PhoneSkope, has a much more universal solution in their phone scoping adapter.  They have many stock smart phone options beyond the iPhone 4/4s (including iPhone 5, Samsung, and Motorola) and will also custom fabricate a phone adapter if it works within their production specification limits.  The adapter portion that connects to the scope is also customizable, locking onto to the phone bracket via a bayonet mount.  

The PhoneSkope adapter has interchangeable, customizable components- the phone bracket and the eyepiece adapter, which connect by bayonet mount.

The team at PhoneSkope went out of their way to mill me a custom adapter to use with my Nikon EDG scope so I could review the product, but the large diameter of the eyepiece was slightly beyond their machining capabilities.  But I've always believed that digiscoping (or in this case, phone scoping) is pretty experimental, so I dug around my garage to see what might work.  I found an unused shop vac connector that fit my eyepiece like a glove and decided to go for the mod:

First, I knocked off the needed end of a shop vac adapter with my band saw (a hacksaw would have worked just as well but hey, Power Tools!)  Still had all of my fingers when I was finished, which is good...

Next step was to clean up the cut on the belt sander.  (Hand sanding would work as well but hey, Power Tools!)

Size check looks good!

The scavenged tube fits like it was custom-made for the task.

And the adapter tube looks like it will fit well on the phone bracket!

Convinced it would work, I decided to to glue it up.  Unfortunately, this took away the great PhoneSkope feature of interchangeable eyepiece adapters but you gotta do what you gotta do.  (Epoxy would work well but hey, Super Glue!)

To the field!!  The PhoneSkope gives a nice centered image and stable mount.  On my zoom eyepiece it starts somewhat vignetted at full camera wide, but by zooming in the phone a bit a full-frame image is obtainable.

Another look at the rig, & what's that bump on the branch? 

Hey, it's a distant 2nd-year Bald Eagle brought into iPhone range with my spotting scope and PhoneSkope adapter!

 

Smart phones shoot video too.  My iPhone won't zoom when filming movies so the side vignetting is there, but it isn't too distracting and opens the possibility of capturing behaviors in a way that still photos can't. 

 

Kaufman and Kaufman: Field Guide to Nature of New England

I used to dream of a field guide that would let me identify everything I saw, a childish fantasy I gave up long ago: no book, no library can ever come close, not even for so relatively circumscribed and so relatively uniform a landscape as New England. Those six states are a big place, and "nature" is even bigger.

NEOS: Worth it or not?

In my most recent Geared for Birding column I brainstormed ideas for wet-condition footwear.  One option I mentioned were NEOS:

Dry & Packable

Travelers wanting to conserve precious luggage space and weight won’t be happy with regular rubber boots, whether cheap or deluxe.  Their very nature makes them bulky and relatively heavy, deal-breakers for many.  Enter Neos overshoes (www.overshoe.com), which offer waterproof protection and work boot traction in a packable, relatively lightweight package.  The only thing these have in common with old-fashioned galoshes is the concept of wearing them over normal shoes for added protection from the elements.  Modern design, materials, and fasteners elevate Neos to the realm of top-flight, functional outdoor gear.  Like Muck Boots, Neos come in many models offering differing heights, degree of insulation, sole type, etc.  I have a simple, uninsulated pair (the Voyager model) that fit very nicely over my sneakers or light low-cut hikers.  With good socks, I’ve worn these in pretty gnarly winter conditions while maintaining plenty of foot comfort.   They collapse down nicely to pack away and when I’m not traveling I leave them in my car for unexpected forays into wet or snowy terrains.  

I recently got an email from a faithful reader Bruce in Michigan regarding his more negative experiences with NEOS, and wanted to pass along his comments:

Hi Bill,

 Just read your article on best bets for getting wet.  As always, I find your articles helpful.  I do have some comments about the NEOS that I think would be of interest to some birders.  They are quite noisy and do not keep you dry.  A friend and I both purchased a pair and find ourselves reluctant to wear them, especially if we are with other people.  When we are sloshing through water, the extra noise is not an issue.   However, when on wet trails, tall grasses loaded with dew or other situations where I would like to wear them, I find the noise both distracting and interfering with listening for bird sounds.  The other issue I have has is either I am very unlucky, or they are not waterproof.  I know they are supposed to be, but that has not been the case for me or my friend.  I have returned 2 pair, which have been quickly replaced, with me paying for return shipping.  The third pair also does not keep me dry.  They are fine in wet grass, mud, etc.  However, if I go in a shallow pond or stream, the water soaks right through.  Don't know how many others have had this experience.  I bought them mostly for travel convenience, but have been greatly disappointed with them.

I really appreciate getting responses from readers, whether in agreement or offering a different opinion on the topic at hand (send any commentary to me at [email protected]).  If you have tried NEOS, what do you think of them?  Please respond by commenting!

Thanks!!  -Bill

First Look: Swarovski's New ATX Scopes & Digiscoping Accessories At Hungary's Hortobágy

 

From left: Guide Attila Steiner looks on as Belgium's Gerard Driessens, England's Tim Appleton, and Sweden's Måns Karlsson field test Swarovski ATX scopes in Hungary's Hortobágy

 A little over a month ago, I was invited to represent the ABA at a pretty amazing gathering in Hungary. I say amazing in that it assembled quite a powerhouse of talent in the European birding industry. Editors, photographers, bloggers, from a wide variety of media outlets joined Swarovski country reps and a goodly number of Swarovksi Optik executives and staff from the home office in Austria.

North America wasn't slighted, though. In addition to me, Corey Finger of 10,000 Birds fame, Gus Axelson, Science Editor for the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, and Clay Taylor, Swarovski's US Naturalist Markets Manager all made the trip across the pond to attend.

 

From left: Corey Finger, Gus Axelson, and Clay Taylor at Tisza Balneum on the shore of Lake Tisza

 

To attend what? The invitees weren't exactly sure and Clay, who we grilled en route, wasn't telling. All I knew was that I was being invited to attend an event put on by one of the ABA's major sponsors and advertisers and that there was going to be some great birding with some great people. I was in.

We didn't have to wait long. Shortly after our arrival at the Tisza Balneum, we were shown the new ATX spotting scopes and a couple of new digiscoping adapters. Then, even better, we were given a set of of the new products to use for the next several days.

Even though we knew we would have to surrender these nifty new toys before leaving, there was a palpable Christmas morning wave of excitement surging through the crowd. These things looked really cool! But how would they perform? 

 

First looks through the ATX. Why is it that we birders so often look through spotting scopes where people are swimming or sunbathing?

What follows are some photos and thoughts about the experience both of birding and digiscoping with the ATX setup and in Hungary. I hope they'll be of value to anyone with an interest in spotting scopes and digiscoping.

First question: what's new about these scopes? I realize that in the shots so far they may not look much different from other products already on the market. Well, have a look at the shot below.

Rather than the standard spotting scope/eyepiece configuration we're all accustomed to, where the eyepiece determines the magnification and zoom, there is now a system that more closely resembles a telephoto camera lens. You choose either a straight (STX) or angled (ATX) ocular unit and then attach it by means of a bayonet mount, again very like a camera lens, to an objective unit of which there are 3: a compact 65mm, an 85mm that is in the range of most larger spotting current spotting scopes, and a stonking big 95mm unit. All can be interchanged, producing scope combinations of different magnification, weight, and brightness

The advantages of such modularity are obvious. You can choose to emphasize small and light or big and bright or split the difference.




I ended up using the angled unit with the 95mm objective almost exclusively, though I spend a bit of time with the 65mm, too.

One last product shot and we'll get back out into the field. I was also given a sample of Swarovski's new TLS APO to test, an adapter that allows you to connect these scopes to a DLSR, Micro 4/3, or other interchangeable lens camera.

They also had samples of a new swing bracket style adapter for digiscoping with smaller point and shoot cameras but I didn't evaluate that. I've done lots of bird and nature photography with DSLRs and standard camera lenses, and a fair bit of digiscoping with point and shoots. But I've never digiscoped with an SLR before though I've been curious about it. So that's what I resolved to do with my time in Hungary. I only wondered how much learning curve there would be.

 

A White Wagtail worked the edge of a dock ©Jeffrey A Gordon

The answer: not much. I found that within 10 or 15 minutes I was getting images I was quite happy with. Not to mention the fun of practicing on common European garden birds that for me were things I seldom or never see.

 

A House Martin gathers mud ©Jeffrey A Gordon

 

In the reed beds around Lake Tisza, there were less domestic species. Three times, I was treated to brief fly-by looks at Little Bittern, one of which was exciting enough that I dropped one of my own lens hoods in the lake, losing it forever.

Any sting was soon eased by the looks and the photos I was getting at and of other birds. A Great Reed Warbler cooperated well, giving its loud, multipart song recalling by turns a thrasher or a chat and perching high up in its namesake substrate.

 

Great Reed Warbler ©Jeffrey A Gordon

A couple of things were obvious. One, Swarovski has really thought carefully about what birders and digiscopers experience in the field and tried to address many of the persistent issues. The TLS APO is easily the most elegant digiscoping adapter I've yet used, attaching a heavy camera body securely and easily. It also deattaches very quickly, making it possible to switch back and forth between photography and observation, which I did frequently.

For those who are not digiscopers, the ATX delivers beautiful views at the eyepiece, startlingly clear and bright and holding together very well even toward the upper end of the zoom range. With the 95mm, that's a whopping 70X. The other two front modules go to 60X.

The new arrangement of zoom and focussing rings adjacent on the barrel feels a bit novel at first but soon becomes second nature, especially if you have used larger camera lenses. And it solves another problem for digiscopers: now you can easily adjust the scope's focus and zoom with one hand while operating the camera with the other, you're not forced to make one hand switch between camera and zoom.

Ergonomically, the scopes were great. Even that giant 95mm didn't feel too heavy though my scope shoulder has carried a lot of weight over the years so your opinion might be different.

I will say, though, that the 65mm breaks new ground in portability. It's light and compact fully assembled. Break it down and it slides into an astonishingly small carrying case that looks more like it would hold a large pair of binoculars, not a scope. Traveling birders, and those who are fond of (or forced into) long hikes, take note. 

Did I see any problems or weaknesses? With the caveat that this was not an exhaustive field test, no. The only obvious question in my mind was how durable and resistant to water, dust, etc that bayonet connection will be. Swarovski's specs say that the ATX will be water tight to 4 meters, so they are confindent in that regard.

And though the ATX/TLS APO combination does indeed make DSLR digiscoping easy, it's still not quite as seamless as photography with a dedicated telephoto lens: there's no autofocus, of course, and metering with my Canon 50D and 60D bodies required frequent exposure adjustment, though nothing burdensome. 

On the plus side for ATX versus a big telephoto lens, the ATX is much smaller and lighter, less expensive, and offers you first rate viewing, something no camera/telephoto combo does.

Overall, I was extremely impressed with the quality and field functionality of the ATX system. I'm interested to see how popular it will prove with birders. Based on what I saw those few days in Hungary, it's likely to become among the most admired of birding optics.

To read Corey Finger's impressions from the same trip, go to his post at 10,000 Birds. Gus Axelson's report can be found at Cornell's Round Robin blog.

I'd also recommend perusing Swarovski's site devoted to the ATX/STX system. I haven't had much time to poke around it yet, but I thought the video here featuring Clay Taylor and Dale Forbes did a very good job of explaining how the TLS APO adapter works.

The ATX will debut publicly at the British Bird Fair next month. It should be available in the US and Canada sometime in September, when I'm sure you'll start to be able to see it in action at various birding festivals and other events.

Our partners at Eagle Optics will have more info on pricing and availibility.

What follows are a few more shots from the trip, which visited the marshes and steppes of Hortobágy, as well as the wooded Buuk Hills. All the wildlife shots are digiscoped with the ATX.

Walking the boardwalks at Halasto. ©Jeffrey A Gordon

 

Truly a multimodal trip, our group traveled by plane, bus, narrow gauge railroad, and even horse cart    ©Jeffrey A Gordon

 

A branchling Long-eared Owl at Hortobágy ©Jeffrey A Gordon

 

Birding the Buuk Hills ©Jeffrey A Gordon

 

Red-backed Shrike ©Jeffrey A Gordon

 

A butterfly whose name escapes me digiscoped with the 65mm ATX When this shot is viewed at full size, mites are clearly visible on the butterflie's thorax. That's sharp. ©Jeffrey A Gordon

 

What trip to Hungary would be complete without goulash and paprika? The group enjoys an outdoor meal at the Nomad Hotel.

 

 

White: A Birdwatching Guide to Brandenburg and Berlin

When the first volume of Michael Lohman’s Vogelparadiese appeared in 1989, many German observers were still unsure just what a bird-finding guide was—and some of the conservation community took up arms against the “betrayal” of their jealously guarded preserves. Fortunately, a lot has changed in the past quarter century. German birders are growing steadily in number and sophistication, and German conservationists have come more and more to understand the link between an interested public and the public interest.

What hasn’t changed is the fact that Germany is still so utterly neglected as a destination for traveling birders. The occasional British group crosses the North Sea in search of woodpeckers, and Dutch birders pause on their way to the marshes and ancient forests of Poland, but especially for North Americans, Germany is terra incognita ornithologically.

It shouldn’t be. True, the country is widely urbanized and agriculturalized, but the long German tradition of scientific zoology and conservationist zeal means that there are plenty of sites where birds long gone elsewhere can still be sought successfully. Thanks to geology and history, many of those localities are in eastern Germany. The federal state of Brandenburg, which surrounds the nation’s capital, Berlin, still harbors White-tailed Eagles and Black Storks and Barred Warblers, and those and many other specialties can be found using Roger White’s fine new English-language Birdwatching Guide to Brandenburg and Berlin.

White begins with a useful seasonal calendar, alerting the hopeful, for example, to the fact that River Warblers and Red-breasted Flycatchers are late May arrivals or that October is the best month for crane-watching. A systematic section lists all of the region’s regularly occurring birds, with suggestions for the best sites to look for many of them; three of Brandenburg’s most sought-after species, Lesser Spotted Eagle, Common Crane, and Great Bustard, are given longer accounts. A complete species index is also of great use to the “target birder.”

The accounts for each of the sites—75 in Brandenburg, 30 in Berlin—are brief, with most of their length taken up by laudably detailed directions for access by public transit, car, or bicycle, or on foot; maps are small but clearly legible, and color photographs give a good foretaste of the habitats to be visited. The sites in Brandenburg are loosely grouped geographically; each such larger section concludes with recommendations and contact information for hotels, bicycle rental agencies, and other useful infrastructure.

Many birders will find the 50 pages describing sites in the 340 square miles of Berlin the most useful. The 31 localities covered range from such well-known destinations as the Tiergarten (with breeding Northern Goshawk!) to local secrets like the Moorlinsee and its Red-necked Grebes. All of these sites can be reached by public transportation, and many can be fitted around a day of meetings or museum visits in this fantastic city.

All of this birding information is supplemented by a brief but useful introduction to traveling to and around the areas covered; Berlin will be even more easily accessible this coming spring, when the new Willy Brandt Airport, with public transportation available right in the terminals, is scheduled to open. White also offers good advice for maps to serve as necessary supplements to those in the book, and provides a short list of miscellaneous German terms—landscape types, road signs, and so on—that birders will need to know; note that “kein Eintrag” in fact means “no [journal, diary, ledger, account, etc.] entry,” while a sign prohibiting access will read “kein Eintritt.”

For visitors to the city of Berlin, this new guide is indispensable; I know of no other guide that will get you to so many birds so easily in the capital. Most of the Brandenburg sites, on the other hand, are also covered in Christian Wagner and Christoph Moning’s excellent Vögel beobachten in Ostdeutschland (2009), which offers on average more text (in German) and more detailed maps for each described site; the German guide also tends to join into a single loop localities treated by White as discreet sites, an approach that has both advantages and disadvantages. For example, the Spreewald—one of the loveliest and most productive birding landscapes in all of central Europe—is described in 12 pages in Wagner and Moning, with seven maps including a regional overview showing the relative locations of the 10 sub-sites covered. White’s treatment does not have an overview map, and it breaks the area into five sites, separately described over just 7 pages—but it adds very precise directions to two additional sites for Ortolan Bunting and Osprey not mentioned in Wagner and Moning.

The solution? Use both books. But if that’s not practical—if there’s a language barrier, or the several glossy-paper pounds of Wagner and Moning put you over your baggage limit—you’ll find yourself very happy, and seeing lots of birds, with this excellent new guide to an excellent and sadly neglected birding landscape.

Available from Buteo Books / ABA Sales. 

Mic up that iPhone: Follow Up

I think I still have a ways to go before I'd call myself an authority on using an iPhone (or similar device) to produce bird recordings, but I've learned a lot since my initial post on this topic about a month ago.  Let me comment on three aspects of acquiring bird sounds on an iPhone.

1) Getting sounds into your device.

• Good:  If a bird is close or loud enough, the built-in mic can capture acceptable recordings.
• Better:  An iPhone/iPod/etc. specific mic can add a lot of reach.  I'm still happy with the  Edutige EIM-001 i-Microphone Voice Recorder- it is small (almost too small- easy to misplace) & fairly cheap and really boosts the audio.  The sound quality isn't necessarily professional, but not bad for documenting & researching bird sounds.
• Best: A high-quality shotgun mic:  David La Puma and others have figured out that an iPhone/iPod/etc. can be a great digital bird sound recorder if you have a quality shotgun mic to capture vocalizations.  The problem is that normal mics won't record to the iPhone/iPod/etc. jack, which is designed for both input and output (iPhone headphones have a built-in mic for phone conversations, talking to Siri, etc.)  An adapter is needed if you want to pipe in sound from a good mic, & fortunately these are available through 3rd party manufacturers.  For example, the kV Connections iPhone 1/8" Microphone Adapter will allow input from a powered mic with a 1/8" (3.5mm) jack.  kV Connections also makes other adapters for different mic types so check them out if you are looking for an input solution.

2) Selecting an app for your recordings.

• Good: Use the device's built-in voice memo app.  Free, works fine.
• Better (maybe?):  Use a 3rd-party recording app (free or cheap) if its features and interface are more to your liking.  For now, I've settled on Recorder (free).  Recordings are pretty easy to get off the phone and onto your computer.  File types are limited to AIFF or MP3, probably fine for dabblers like myself.
• Best:  Use a professional field recording app like FiRe 2 ($6).  Link over to see the impressive list of features this app boasts...

3) Selecting sound processing software to use on your computer.  I'm too far out of my league to offer much meaningful insight here.  Perhaps folks with more experience can offer suggestions for us in the comments or in another blog post??  

• Good:  Use free audio editing software like Audacity.  It has some basic filters, produces spectrograms, & the price is right!  Ted Floyd has figured out some neat tricks with Audacity & I hope he'll comment on these or offer up a post on the topic...
• Also Good:  Cornell's free Raven Light lets users record, save, and visualize sounds as spectrograms and waveforms.  Editing options are limited, though.   Andrew Spencer offers some great tips & tricks to using this software at Earbirding.com.
• Better/Best:  Sound guru Nathan Pieplow extols Adobe Audition on his Earbirding.com blog & offers Audition editing tips & tricks in one of his posts.  Can anyone comment on Cornell's Raven Pro or other options to consider for serious bird sound editing??

Vocalizing Canyon Wren © Bill Schmoker, Jefferson County, Colorado, March 2009

Mic up that iPhone

iPhones, iPod touches, and other smartphones, tablets, or i-devices have incredible utility for birders in the field.  While iEtiquette should be considered carefully, there are many ways that these can ease our load and better our understanding of birds. Electronic field guides, bird sound recording libraries, BirdsEye (for finding birds & birding locations), weather apps, travel apps, mapping apps, and communications by phone, email & texting all support my birding with the information they output, but don't forget that these devices can collect data, too.  My iPhone can be used for digiscoping (er, phone scoping- check out Bird Chick's tutorial for this technique!), entering eBird checklists (using BirdsEye BirdLog- more on that later...), and for recording bird songs.  It is the latter utility that I'd like to briefly discuss here...

 There are many recording apps to choose from including the built-in Voice Memo- I happen to use Recorder but in truth I haven't researched these very deeply (please weigh in though the comments section if you have a better recommendation!)  It lets me record audio through the built-in mic, saves the tracks, allows for track clipping, and has the ability to export AIFF or MP3 versions of the recordings.  It can be pretty slick to grab audio of a vocalizing bird for later research or documentation, but the downside is that the built-in mic is meant to record voice right next to it, not a faint sound being heard in the distance.  Enter the Edutige EIM-001 i-Microphone Voice Recorder, a small mic that plugs into the earphone jack and promises a 12 decibel boost to the device's recording volume.  

After trying it I can say that it indeed boosts the recording performance of my iPhone- check out the examples below.  It doesn't necessarily produce professional-quality audio but I think that for the price (around $25) & size (about like the end of a pencil) it will add a lot of utility to my iPhone, letting me document birds & research the ID of unknown bird vocalization without toting along a separate recorder.  

Examples:

Marsh_No_Mic.mp3
Marsh sounds, Jackson County, Colorado, 25 March 2012 recorded with iPhone built-in mic.

Marsh_Mic.mp3
Same marsh sounds recorded moments later with EIM-001 i-Microphone mounted on iPhone.  (p.s. My herp-pro buddy Joey Kellner tells me the crickety sounds are from Western Chorus Frogs.)

WESO_no-mic.mp3
Western Screech-Owl, Alamosa County, Colorado, 30 March 2012 recorded with iPhone built-in mic.

WESO_mic.mp3
Same owl recorded moments later with EIM-001 i-Microphone mounted on iPhone.  While still faint, the owl comes through much better with the iPhone mic'd up.  There's also an increase in the background noise, but I got sufficient audio to generate a definitive spectrograph of the vocalization (nice, as this is an eBird review species for the county & so I could attach the image to my checklist in the comments section.)

Dutson: Birds of Melanesia

Few even are the birders who, on hearing a mention of Melanesia, can confidently put their fingers on the map. Fewer still are the birders who will actually get to visit this vast stretch of tropical islands, extending from New Guinea to Fiji off the northern and eastern coast of Australia.

Whether we know where they are or not, however, those islands have been the site of monumental research into avian distribution and speciation, conducted over more than a century by some of the world's most important biologists and evolutionary theorists; at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we cannot think about birds without thinking--at whatever remove--about the work done by such scholars as Ernst Mayr and Jared Diamond, whose 2001 book The Birds of Northern Melanesia was called by David Bishop "the single most important publication on evolutionary biology since Darwin's." 

The results of all that island evolution are on handsome display in this splendid new guide from Princeton University Press. I'm fairly sure that I'll never get to Melanesia, but after reading Guy Dutson's work--and relishing the fine illustrations by Richard Allen, Adam Bowley, John Cox, and Tony Disley--I'm inspired to try.

The guide covers the birds of fourteen island groups belonging to four nations. Given the high rates of endemism and the pronounced geographic variation shown by many species, this could have been a nightmare of book design; but the challenge is elegantly met here. A careful reading of the front matter's explanation and a little practice was all it took to unlock the clever system of color-coded distribution bars, which not only show which island groups are inhabited by a given species but also reveal its status as an endemic, a resident, a regular migrant or vagrant, an introduced species, or extinct. All this information is provided both on the caption pages of the plates and in a convenient tabular checklist, making it easy for the lucky birder to prepare for a trip to one or the other of the islands.

The guide comprises two sections, one containing 86 beautiful plates with their facing-page captions and distribution charts, the other the species accounts. The texts are headed with the species' English, French, and scientific names, often with notes indicating different taxonomic approaches, and include a description, an often extensive treatment of similar species, voice descriptions, accounts of habit and habitat often including flight style, a statement of each bird's conservation status, and a detailed (often island-by-island) summary of geographic distribution. 

Melanesia as defined here covers some 42,000 square miles. To minimize page flipping, the guide's passerine plates are broken into seven color-coded sections, one for each of the major island groups included. Thus, the birder visiting New Caledonia and confronted with an unfamiliar songbird has to consult only five plates, the visitor to the Bismarcks 11, and so on; the non-passerines, many of which, especially the water birds, are widely distributed among the islands, occupy the first 49 plates. There is necessarily some repetition in the case of species occurring across several island groups, but the artists and the designer have taken this as an opportunity to display regional variation in several species; have a look, for example, at the various Island Thrushes or the Cardinal Myzomelas, some of which differ strikingly from their counterparts on other islands.

In addition to the usual habitat descriptions, regional maps, and conservation discussion, the guide's introductory material includes a dozen pages on birding Melanesia, with practical tips for finding birds on 20 islands and island groups; one gets an unvarnished sense of just how difficult, even dangerous many of these sites are to visit.

The book is refreshingly well edited and proofread, the only major goof the English names given Tachybaptus novaehollandiae at the top of Plate I. (It should be Australasian Grebe.) It's a pleasure to leaf through this guide, which serves very well indeed the author's and artists' intention to "stimulate the study and conservation" of the beautiful birds of a remote and alluring part of the globe.