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From: neal@druhi.UUCP (Neal D. McBurnett)
Newsgroups: rec.birds,sci.bio
Subject: Wanted: descriptive database of birds
Message-ID: <1525@druhi.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Dec-86 14:33:47 EST
Article-I.D.: druhi.1525
Posted: Tue Dec 16 14:33:47 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Dec-86 22:00:30 EST
Organization: AT&T Information System Labs, Denver, Co
Lines: 18
Keywords: flight, coloring, habitat, geographical distribution
Xref: mnetor rec.birds:13 sci.bio:65

Frequently, when I see a bird in the field, I only get an
incomplete set of observations.  However, I suspect that if I had
a good database to search, I could frequently identify what
I saw.  The database could also tell me what other observations
would be needed to decide between similar speces.  (Maybe I'm really
talking about an expert system here...)

I'm thinking of queries like
	flock of birds in central Colorado, November 15th, undulating
	flight, long and narrow beak, ....

Hopefully the database would even have information about how common
various birds are so that it could give educated guesses if the
data weren't decisive.

Has anyone out there ever run into such a database?

-Neal McBurnett, ihnp4!druhi!neal, 303-538-4852