The heart of the CD-ROM is the set of screens about individual birds, one for each of the species covered in the guide. These screens display the famous Roger Tory Peterson illustrations, showing, as appropriate, the appearance of male, female, and immature birds, and their appearance in different seasons. There's a brief text describing the species, and buttons to take you to other information.
You can see a map showing the range of the species, view a high-quality photo of the bird in its natural habitat, see a list of similar species, and even play a recording of the bird's call.
When you play the bird's call, a box is displayed with a brief description of the call, like "clear, slurred whistles," to help you remember what the bird's song sounds like. The Field Marks option points out the distinguishing marks that will help you identify this species. All in all, this screen provides a great deal of information to help you identify a particular species.
To find the screen about a particular species, you can use visual navigation tools. You click on an area of the Visual Categories screen displaying the general category you're searching for. This leads to another screen, allowing you to select from the family or group that your bird belongs to. Finally, a sequence of screens shows small pictures of all the species in this family or group, and you can select the species you want to learn about. All these choice are made on the basis of pictures, so you don't need to know the name of the species you're searching for. If you do know the name, you can use the Bird Finder to search through an alphabetical list of the species on the CD-ROM.
There are other features that you'll find useful. There's a set of videos, especially useful to the beginner, in which Peterson explains the basics of bird identification. The Bird Finder allows you to answer a series of questions about a bird you're trying to identify, such as geographic region, habitat, size, and color. The Bird Finder then displays a list of possible birds, and you can view the individual screens for each bird until you make your identification. The Skill Builder allows you to take a multiple choice quiz, based either on silhouettes or full color pictures of the birds. Finally, there's a simple Life List editor that allows you to record the date and place where you've seen each species.
If you're interested in bird-watching, whether you're a dedicated birder or just interested in identifying your backyard visitors, you find a lot that's useful in this CD-ROM.
David Finkel teaches computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute..
©1996, ProMotion, inc.