As in using the program, you click on the icon of the species to return to the Title Card. [esc] or R-click returns you always to the Text List.

The map also indicates graphically the huge scope of this Bird ID software. The 2165 species with full color illustrations represent all the species listed in the main text and appendices (even some obsolete appendices) by the current AOU Checklist, plus additional species confirmed by the records committee for Trinidad and Tobago.

The project history: While participating with a Hollis, NH, fifth grade teacher, Paul Curtis, on some bird walks, he suggested I might want to work with some of his students on a special project. We decided to have the students draw pictures of local birds, and I would scan them and use them to illustrate a database my son Corey and I were typing — a long DBF file of all the AOU species.  .  .

The students did such an outstanding job, I decided to try drawing the species myself. Eight years later, and with suggestions from many other more talented bird artists, all 2166 species are complete—perhaps not beautiful, but diagnostic, which is what is essential for field ID.

Much of the effort for those years was also spent recording sounds in the wild, and getting to know other recordists who often knew the species better. I must also say that the thrill of recording a bird you’ve never seen, was actually equaled when, from the Internet on a cold New England winter night, I received by email sounds of new species from friends I had also never seen! The list of all these good friends is included in the software Acknowledgments in “about MIST”.