On my EBird app, I saw that there were a number of birds from the Pacific Northwest that I have never seen before, located not far from me in an area called Discovery Park in Seattle. I headed there after work and quickly found several Chestnut-backed Chickadee, flying around from one branch to another hunting for small insects. Beautiful little bird, very similar, of course, to our Black-capped Chickadee, which comes to the backyard feeder everyday. Cute little bird and very common in the Northwest. The technology is amazing in assisting birders nowadays. You record what you see in EBird. Other birders see what you record and approximately where you were and then you go there to see if you can find the same bird. Then I use another app to listen to bird song and it helps pick out the birds that you are looking for. Mostly, I use the Merlin app for that. Then, when you take a picture of a bird and if you are not sure what bird you have, you can go to Picture Bird app to either confirm or show you what species you snapped. The combination of these three apps can take a person from just seeing or hearing a bird to an intermediate birder in a very short period of time. Just amazing.
