Saw another rainbow on my way in to work this morning. Since I was driving at the time, I decided to forgo snapping a picture with my cellphone camera, although I was pretty tempted. I learned a while back (from a near-miss, not an accident, thank you very much) that birding while driving is a problem. So even though it’s not illegal in my state,* I will refrain from playing Twitch while behind the wheel.
If you’re not familiar with Twitch, either you’re not a birder, or you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch. If you are a birder, and you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you need to have this application. It’s simply incredible. It has photo quizzes of many different categories of North American birds, with different levels of difficulty to accommodate your birding skill level.
There are only a few things I would add to it:
- a quiz each on eastern and western pelagics.
- when you miss a bird, I’d like the ability to review both the right answer and what we guessed.
- links out to range maps and other ID info, either to iBird Pro (which BirdJam doesn’t have anything to do with, so that’s not likely) or to their own database, or to a wifi link to BNA or Wikipedia, or anything.
As Art Linkletter said about the game of Life, “I heartily endorse this game.”
*Although it’s not a good idea even to talk on a hands-free headset while driving, I have discovered that Florida does not, at this time, have laws banning cell phone use by drivers. In fact, it’s one of only eight states that have laws prohibiting local governments from enacting their own laws about drivers’ cell phone use.
Drivers in Florida can talk, either on their handheld or hands free.
They can send text messages.
They can watch streaming video, if they want, on their cell phone.
There is no specific law against any of these practices. (They do have a law against distracted driving, which I suppose covers these issues, but still…) The state does collect crash data, if that’s any comfort to you.