Coyote Crossing alerted me to this awesome-looking application for the iPhone: a field guide to the birds of North America. On my way back home to the apartment last night, I parked my car in Mt. Pleasant and was walking up the hill to my building, when I saw two of my neighbors pointing a flashlight into the woods (yes, we have woods in DC). "What have you got?" I asked. It was an owl, and they obligingly pointed it out to me. I identified it as a barred owl, and explained the field marks that would allow them to distinguish it from our other big eastern owl, the great horned owl. As we talked, the barred owl flushed and silently swooped through the tree branches and into the darkness. Anyhow, if my neighbors had the iBird Explorer Plus, they wouldn't have needed to rely on an ex-ornithologist walking by at that moment. Pretty cool!

Labels: birdies, dc, gear, tech