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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hauksen" data-source="post: 3655815" data-attributes="member: 142861">Hi Mark,I find flag (and band) reading quite difficult at times, too.One additional problem you didn't mention yet is colour-fading of the "background" ... I once reported "lime" as yellow for a Eurasian Spoonbill, for example. (The error was caught because the code didn't exist on "lime", and I had a photograph of the bird. The project has switched from coded bands to multiple coloured uncoded flags since then, with a different set of difficulties.)I presume that to a certain degree, there are technical reasons for the use of the bands or flags in the form we know them. I suppose engraving simply is the most accessible (or affordable) way of creating numbered bands of flags.With regard to erreneous reporting, I'm not sure all banding projects employ coding techniques that ensure single-digit reading errors are recognized: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance#Examples" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance#Examples</a>Another aspect is that the typography used often makes it difficult to positively tell certain numbers and letters apart, such as 6/8/9, or 1/I/J/L/7 etc. (That's more of an issue on curved bands than on flat flags.) I really wish a font designed to facilitate exact identification were used, such as: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift</a>Regards,Henning</blockquote>

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