Fwd: New England Shorebird Guide free app for smart phone updated

[Soheil Zendeh]

Folks,

New England Shorebird Guide, a photographic guide freely available on the Bird Observer site, now covers 37 species of shorebirds that occur in New England, northeastern United States and eastern Canada -- and Athol too! The guide is designed primarily as a visual aid on your smart phone that can be used in the field; it can also be installed on your tablet or computer. Access the guide using this link:
https://www.birdobserver.org/Better-Birding/New-England-Shorebird-Guide.

Due to severe declines in the populations of most shorebird species over the past several decades, it is important that bird and nature lovers become as familiar as possible with these birds and advocate for their conservation. Shorebirds are reputed to be difficult to identify. This may be true for some species, but it is also partly due to the fact that most shorebird species are highly migratory and travel long distances during the course of a year. Most are in our region for only a few weeks every year, so they are easy to miss and hard to learn to identify.

By learning their habits and habitats, as well as their behavior, shapes, and plumages, most observers can identify 20-plus species—perhaps up to 30 species of shorebirds—in New England and adjoining states and provinces each year. To increase the fan base of appreciation for these birds, I created this visual guide to shorebirds of New England and the northeast, and Bird Observer is generously providing free access on its website.

I hope you find this guide useful for finding and identifying shorebirds in our region. Please do not hesitate to share this guide with others.

It is also important that you communicate to me the shortcomings, errors, and inconsistencies of the guide so that I can improve future versions. You can reach me at sohz...@gmail.com.

User help as well as instructions for installing the guide icon on your iPhone or Android phone can be accessed from within the app. Thanks to Jay Dia, Eric Mueller and Paul Bain for providing help instructions for Android phones. The photos in the guide were contributed by many generous photographers.

New England Shorebird Guide content was created by Soheil Zendeh. Marsha Salett of Bird Observer was the editor. Eric Swanzey, web manager for Bird Observer and other Massachusetts birding sites, created the website/app.

Many shorebirds will be arriving in our region in April, May and June. Enjoy them right now!

Soheil Zendeh
Littleton, MA 01460