Bird in the Hand: An Electronic Field Guide App for Bird Watchers

Author

Roa-Villescas, M. ; Orozco-Alzate, Mauricio

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. & Comput., Univ. Nac. de Colombia, Manizales, Colombia

Volume

31

Issue

2

fYear

2012

Firstpage

8

Lastpage

14

Abstract

This article documents the design and implementation of an electronic field guide for bird watchers-named RB Birds-developed to run on mobile smart phones and aimed at looking up, checking, and identifying 362 bird species that are encountered at the Rio Blanco Ecological Reserve, "which is located on the outskirts of Manizales, Colombia. This application package has a database that contains information corresponding to each species including images, songs, physical descriptions, feeding habits, migratory movements in time and space, and habitat requirements, among others. RB Birds has a specialized search engine that allows the identification of specimens based on observed physical attributes.

Keywords

database management systems; ecology; leisure industry; mobile computing; search engines; smart phones; RB Birds; Rio Blanco Ecological Reserve; application package; bird species; bird watchers; database; electronic field guide application; feeding habits; habitat requirements; migratory movements; mobile smart phones; observed physical attributes; physical descriptions; search engine; specimen identification; Birds; Computational modeling; Computer languages; Computer software; Global Positioning System; Mobile communication; Portable media players;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Potentials, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0278-6648

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MPOT.2011.2178281

Filename

6169888