I doubt the Salton Sea would be on most people's places of things to see. Those that do stop probably only last long enough to take a whiff of the air before getting back in to their cars and moving on. It may as well be paradise to birders who will happily travel from far away to experience the 120 degree summer heat and rare birds.

Both first year males, I'd say we have a match. I wonder where it spent the last four months?

Maybe the same bird that was in Westport, WA for a few days in October..

Many of the ones I had in mind have been covered. The warblers are pretty egregious and speaking as someone who lives on the west coast and has yet to see most of them, the inexplicable names make it really hard to keep them all straight. I'll throw in any family that uses a similar family name for every species except one. Clapper Rail, Virginia Rail, King Rail, Yellow Rail, Black Rail....Sora? Peregrine Falcon, Prairie Falcon, Gyrfalcon (which also slightly breaks convention, admittedly), and Merlin? Veery fits in there as well as well as many more I can't think of at the moment. I also wish they would redo some of the names that imply familial relationship where non exists. Grosbeaks, Buntings, etc. Finally, I nominate Eastern Kingbird. Here in Western Washington we've had EAKI's breeding in a saltwater estuary for half a decade or so. They're common just a couple hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean.

I agree. Field guides are really good at giving you visual representation of what a static bird looks like, but decreasingly good at some of the things you mention. One thing I didn't see mentioned is that the true "field guides" are limited by size while phones and tablets are essentially not. This would ideally allow publishers of electronic field guides to to include many more visual presentations as well as much more text. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could combine the photos from the best photo field guides, with the paintings of Sibley, and the text of something like Dunne's Field guide companion? Maybe even add in the ability to listen to recordings from Xeno-Canto. In addition, you could do a lot of things with a birding application that would be almost impossible with a book. Grant mentions studying birds found in regions you're planning on traveling to. It would be easy to build in a feature allowing you to pick a region and time of year so the app could provide you with "flash cards" of certain birds and to quiz yourself. Lots of possibilities once you start thinking outside of the box. Just thought I'd add that the following site has a lot of video http://ibc.lynxeds.com/ PS: I hope I didn't submit the same-ish comment multiple times. I accidently clicked post a few times, but wasn't logged in.