Washington BirdBox

NOTE - NEW PHONE NUMBER as of 12/1/2007:

(206) 364-1162

Gene Hunn, System Administrator
BirdBox AT wos.org
Personal phone number (206) 365-2043

The Washington BirdBox is a voice mailbox sponsored by the Washington Ornithological Society. To leave a message about a notable sighting, or to listen to recent reports from other birders, call (206) 364-1162 and follow the prompts. We hope you enjoy your visits to the BirdBox and that you will find it useful in your field work!

The following information may help you to use the BirdBox more efficiently.

1. The shorter the reports you leave, the better. Short reports mean that other birders listening to the reports will not tie up the line as long. If you leave an unusually long report, the BirdBox will remind you.

2. You can interrupt the playing of most system notices of a routine nature, and any date/time stamp and its associated report, by pressing the "#" key and moving ahead. Menus and prompts that require specific caller feedback in order for the program to proceed are not interruptible.

3. You must actively save your recorded reports and comments by pressing "7", or they will be deleted. This is done to cut down on the number of "dud" or blank reports.

4. Please exit the BirdBox by pressing "9" at either the Information Menu or the Main Menu, rather than by just hanging up. This will allow the BirdBox to reset much more quickly for the next caller.

5. You can enter your response to a menu while the menu is playing, without waiting until it has finished. All menus are played twice, and if no response is detected during that time, the BirdBox will hang up.

6. If you press the telephone keys too fast, the BirdBox will not be able to interpret them. It is best to press the keys firmly and at moderate speed.

7. If you have a weak connection, as sometimes happens with cellular or cordless phones, the BirdBox may not register your keystrokes correctly. If this happens, try again. In rare cases it may be necessary to use a hard-wired instrument.

8. Reports are stored in reverse chronological order, with the most recent report first.

9. The BirdBox keeps the last 18 reports, or all reports from the last seven days, whichever is greater.

10. The system administrator will review the recorded reports and comments on a regular basis. This may be daily, but will probably be every few days. During vacations, it may be longer.

11. Your first stop when you enter the program is the Information Menu, which allows you to listen to announcements on a variety of topics, or to access the BirdBox Main Menu. However, once you have moved ahead to the Main Menu, you cannot return to the Information Menu. So if you want to listen to any of the announcements, you should do that at the beginning of your session.

12. Please feel free to leave a comment for the System Administrator regarding any problems you may have encountered with system performance, or features that you would like to see implemented in future versions, by pressing "5" at the Main Menu.

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