[Posted by Chuck Almdale]

This is a gift (free!) [Link] from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to the birders of the world. It’s interactive, a game, a learning experience, and fun. Fiddle around with it and you can get something like this:

Click on one system (as skeletal below), select a part (carpometacarpus & digits below) and it’s highlighted, press the little information button, and information, including pronunciation, appears.

If you know anything about human anatomy, you may be surprised how many organs and organ names we share with birds. Funny thing, that. It’s one of the supports of the theory of evolution.

Putting it in flashcard mode gives you an apparently endless series of questions like the following (there are somewhere over–maybe way over–100 parts identified); look for the reddish part below:

You can select one, some or all of eleven settings for the flashcards (feathers, nervous system, skeleton, etc.) on the right side of the screen.

I must have done about 80 flash cards and was surprised by how much I knew (good guesser). Anyway…check it out. Being able to name the scapulars versus coverts is actually useful knowledge when you’re trying to ID a bird or know what someone else is talking about when their obscure descriptions are filled with arcane terminology. And…the next time you eat a chicken (nuggets or flamin’ wings don’t count) you can pull out the trachea, wave it around, and you’ll know exactly which part you’re waving, thereby immensely impressing your friends.

Here’s their advertising blurb:

Coming soon: A link to the 90-minute Zoom panel discussion of the new Avilist, the One Avian Checkist To Rule Them All. Watch for it.