Alex Wild, a biologist at the University of Arizona, has a blog on insects, photography and life.  He has an excellent article on tricks and tips for keeping ants relatively still while photographing them in their natural surroundings and while performing natural behaviors. 

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

I am pleased to publicly announce the launch of BirdPlanner.com

I have been working on this project for one year now, and it is now ready for public consumption.  The site enables bird watchers and ecotourists to create a list of the birds that live at any location in the Western Hemisphere.  If you are travelling and want a general idea of what birds you might be able to see, this site will do just that.

I currently consider a region size of 0.5 degree latitude and longitude, which corresponds to about 20 mile radius on the equator.  I will be expanding the range to about a 60 mile radius to account for regions where there are abrupt changes in habitat.  In addition, a 60 mile radius would still correspond to driving distance.

I came up with this idea in February 2007 when my wife and I travelled to Ecuador.  I spend about 2 weeks digging through field guides to get some idea of what birds I might find.  Now, you can get this information in seconds!

This site is absolutely free… and will stay free.
For this reason, if you find it useful, please consider either a donation or purchasing a field guide via one of the links.  I will use the proceeds to keep this site alive and improve it.

At this point the errors run at about 10%.  I will continue to work to reduce any errors that are found.  The ordering currently follows Sibley and Monroe.  I will be adding an option for the American Ornithological Union ordering in the near future.  I also plan to highlight the selected region on the Google map, but I am having trouble with this.  Last, some migratory birds and newly separated species are not represented in all regions where they are present.  I’d like to be able to keep up with this as well. 

I have data for all of the mammals of the Western Hemisphere, and I’d like to add that as well.  Last, I would love to extend this to the entire world.  If you have any ideas on how to do this efficiently, or where to get data, please let me know!

Please try out BirdPlanner.com.
Use BirdPlanner.com to plan your trips.
Spread the word about BirdPlanner.com
Link to BirdPlanner.com on your webpages!

I single-handedly built this entire website from scratch and I’d love to see people use this!

Enjoy,
Kevin Knuth
Albany NY