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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Northumbrian Birding (2 Viewers)

My night exploits involved my able assistant 'keeping toot' whilst I. like some Dad's Army-esque character, crawled to get a look and the 'Photo of the Year' :-O snap. The bird was very settled and creeping about having its supper whilst we were there and as we left.

There's hundreds of yards of vaible habitat in which it could very easily hide. A dusk visit, suitably camo'ed up with green and black face paint and pieces of foliage strategically placed mught be worth a try.

In any event, the place was alive with birds - warblers, thrushes, Tawny Owl, other u/k calls so it's worth a punt regardless.
 
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Technical Hitch?

Anyone access BirdGuides' website on a mobile device? I use B/Berry and I can readily see county pages for everywhere EXCEPT Northumberland. Durham, Cleveland, South Yorks all load properly, but any attempt to go local is met with a warning - HTTP Error 413, Request Entity Too Large! :C

All worked well until about the time the BirdGuides server crashed. Desktop access is unaffected.

Thoughts? Anyone having similar problems?
 
Wood Sandpipers

2 at Druridge Pools at 12.30 from South facing hide. Not showing very well though. No sign of previously reported Spotted Redshanks. Drake Garganey from Budge screen.

Also, 2 Wood Sands at Bothal Pond at 1.30.
 
Bob Biggs said:
2 at Druridge Pools at 12.30 from South facing hide. Not showing very well though. No sign of previously reported Spotted Redshanks. Drake Garganey from Budge screen.

Also, 2 Wood Sands at Bothal Pond at 1.30.
Click to expand...


The interloper drake put on an entertaining show this morning.
 

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jimmy and I were out at newbiggin yesterday morning, and we thought something rare had turned up.....we saw a load of blokes with cameras staring at a bush, so naturally we got excited and went over to find out what was around!

Turns out they were infact waiting for a train to pull out of alcan, so they could ` twitch` it. SOmething to do with an older type of engine pulling there atmo.

Bit of an anticlimax! but they made us feel `normal` for a while )
 
The Liverbirder said:
Anyone access BirdGuides' website on a mobile device? I use B/Berry and I can readily see county pages for everywhere EXCEPT Northumberland. Durham, Cleveland, South Yorks all load properly, but any attempt to go local is met with a warning - HTTP Error 413, Request Entity Too Large! :C

All worked well until about the time the BirdGuides server crashed. Desktop access is unaffected.

Thoughts? Anyone having similar problems?
Click to expand...

Hi Liverbirder

I don't think this is related to our server rebuild; more likely the Northumberland page has simply grown lately (the size of the page varies with the size of the randomly selected site photo, the number of recent sightings, the size and number of newly added site photos, etc.) and is now bigger than your Blackberry's page-size limit. Different county pages contain differing and varying amounts of data - Northumberland is likely to be one of the larger pages (you probably won't be able to view, say, Norfolk either). Strictly speaking we don't support Bird News Extra on mobile devices, but - at your own risk - you may be able to increase the page-size limit on your Blackberry as described at http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/micr...UE_1_1&dialogID=82526109&stateId=1 0 82506937

Cheers
Dave Dunford
Webmaster, BirdGuides Ltd
 
Dave - I am grateful for your taking the time and trouble to respond, as I am for the PM from Rare Visitor.

You are right, Norfolk does not load either.

My concern and frustration is that for over a year it has all worked very, very well. So, at the risk of being misconstrued as blunt, what has changed?

My B/Berry and my service provider remain the same. My desktop view appears consistent too; it does not have bigger or better or more bells and whistles. So surely what has prompted my now being unable to bird (remotely) better through technology can be reversed and so normal service can then be resumed.

Some purists out there will wince at my reliance on the web BUT there is nothing worse than getting home and accessing your site on the PC to find something missed that could have been enjoyed whilst I was still out'n'about. I work long hours and do not get out as much as I would like (who does?) and at 46, time to enjoy Mother Nature is all too precious and limited. I am simply not able to 'wander lonely as a cloud' and hope to see something worthwhile; I use BirdGuides to help focus my attention and also keep the fuel bill down.

I for one would not miss slightly fewer photos or slightly smaller site photos in order to re-acquire the excellent facility I had until a few weeks ago.

Selfish I know, but if I do not raise this, nobody else will.

Regards
 
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The Liverbirder said:
So, at the risk of being misconstrued as blunt, what has changed?
Click to expand...

Nothing, that I'm aware of. As new sites and site photos are added to our database, the county pages get gradually bigger and bigger; the Northumberland page is just over 500Kb and (pure guesswork) maybe it has just exceeded the limit your BlackBerry permits for the first time? I genuinely can't think of anything that the server rebuild has changed or that I have done that would increase the size of the county pages.

I need to prioritise my work carefully, and have to justify any projects according to demand and the number of users who would benefit. Sorry to disappoint you, but the BNE service was never designed for mobile browsers and I'm reluctant to compromise the functionality and appearance of the page on a standard browser to suit the needs of a platform that it was never intended to support (obviously as mobile Internet becomes more ubiquitous we keep these sorts of policy issues under review, though I would expect the capacity of mobile platforms to increase anyway).

On a more helpful note, though, you may find that you can achieve a similar result to what you get from the county pages (possibly even better) by applying a filter to Bird News Extra that shows only reports from the county or counties you're interested in. See www.birdguides.com/birdnews/setup.asp?s=1 (I'm assuming you're a Bird News Extra subscriber; filtering is a subscriber-only function). The filtered Bird News Extra page has fewer graphics and less extraneous information so should be a smaller download.

Alternatively you could increase the page size on your Blackberry as suggested earlier, or try our Bird News Anywhere service, which was designed for the limitations of mobile platforms.

Cheers
Dave
 
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