"Mission: Migration" online game

Want to help your flock safely fly long distances while looking for food, water, shelter and space? Click on Mission: Migration to accept the challenge and see how birds travel during spring and fall migrations.

Players will help the flock dodge storms and airplanes, catch jet streams and fly faster or slower. They also will choose landing sites when the flock runs out of energy.

Kudos to the designers for choosing to feature a young woman as the birder who introduces the animated game! Unfortunately, the pop-up screen wasn't adjustable in size, the text appeared in a small font, and the symbols in the farmland landing zone were too small to read as hazards; the game could be better but illustrates some great concepts.

Eagle Eyes birding game

Have you played Eagle Eyes, the observational game hosted by National Audubon Society? You get to see two images side by side, for a number of seconds that you choose before the game begins, and then you click on the images to pinpoint differences.

Each pair differs in five ways, and if you find most of the differences in the five sets, then you've earned the Eagle Eyes rank. I earned 21 of 25 on my second try -- with 30 seconds per pair -- so I get to join the ranks.

How'd you do?

News roundup

Craigslist founder hosts bird video game
On April 23, an online game that features the San Francisco back yard of Craigslist founder Craig Newmark will go live. Two computer engineers -- Ken Goldberg and Dez Song -- at University of California Berkeley and Texas A&M University, respectively, created CONE Sutro Forest in which players take pictures of birds using a remote-control pan-tilt-zoom video camera and identify the birds correctly to earn points.

"My backyard is a small forest. I got lucky and I love nature if it makes itself convenient for me," said Newmark, who said he often watches for birds from his deck overlooking Sutro Forest.

"I put up a bunch of feeders and the birds started coming, and I can identify a couple of dozen."

The free game will become available on Monday the 23rd.


New frogmouth caught in Solomon Islands
For the first time in 100 years, scientists captured a new genus of frogmouth, now named Rigidipenna inexpectata. Ornithologists David Steadman and Andrew Kratter of the Florida Museum of Natural History found the birds with help from local hunters.

"This discovery underscores that birds on remote Pacific islands are still poorly known, scientifically speaking," Steadman said. "Without the help of local hunters, we probably would have overlooked the frogmouth."

More details about the discovery and the predatory bird appear in the April issue of Ibis: The International Journal of Avian Science and at the FLMNH link.