gdanmitchell
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bs kite wrote:
Does anyone here know what a *Field Guide* is?
I have a shelf full of them, some of which I’ve owned for many decades. The illustrations are often quite useful, and they still make a useful adjunct to the apps.
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CanadaMark wrote:
If it weren't for Merlin and Google's image search, I wouldn't know what at least half the birds were that I take pictures of. Personally I love being able to identify it within seconds (even via their sound), learn about them, and learn how to identify them in the future. Merlin also has lots of helpful notes on how to differentiate between similar looking species, which I also appreciate as the electronic identification can't always be relied upon when differences are extremely subtle. Being electronic, they can also be constantly updated and pull from a wider database than what could reasonably fit in a book.)...Show more →
I’m pretty much with you. When I’m in the field it is really simple to grab a picture or enter a description of a bird I don’t know into an app like Merlin. Note the “bird I don’t know” part. The alternatives would be to a) carry field guides and do the lookup process, b) use a photo late on to ID the bird that I had seen and photographed.
Using the app isn’t necessarily a way to avoid learning. It is actually a pretty useful way to learn how to identify birds and to learn the birds that you see.
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mogul wrote:
I remember being directed off of the freeway & going straight into a Race riot in LA. Sometimes the familiar route is the better route.
Indeed. Something quite similar happened to me years ago while using my (old) car’s navigation system to find my way through an area that was unfamiliar to me.
But that was using a pretty “dumb” navigation system that had no “awareness” of current conditions. Today all of the phonn navigation systems do track where problems are, and car systems do, too, at least if you pay the annual data fees. With them, you’d almost certainly be routed _around_ a problem like that.
I live about 50 miles from San Francisco, and I go up there a lot — sometimes at night or in poor weather or during rush hours. After decades of driving there I have absolutely no problem figuring out where I’m going or what routes are avaialable to me. However, I turn on the navigation system since it lets me know quickly when changing traffic conditions (like riots, accidents, flooding, congestion, events, and more) alter the drive times.
There’s no perfect system, whether it is my own knowledge or one of the apps. But they do get me there faster and smarter than just relying on my (extensive in this case) knowledge.
And… even as a (very) longtime Bay Area and California driver, by using the apps I have learned a number of useful routes that I would never have thought of. I learned a new and faster route into Death Valley that I never had thought of during my decades of going there. Last fall, for the heck of it, I let my navigation app lead me to Yosemite Valley, a place I have been going to for more than six decades. It started on one of my two normal routes and then out in the Central Valley it took me on some crazy backroads that I hardly ever have used and then a couple that were completely new to me. It turned out to be a fine route and perhaps at least 10 minutes faster than the routes I’ve always used.
In other words, I learned MORE about route finding in California by using the app.
I’m not going to write off the new stuff completely.
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