| Peterson® Mobile Field Guide to Backyard Birds Peterson Field Guides®and Wildtones.com Bring More Than Bird Calls to Your Mobile Phone Cell phones "ring in" new educational tool with famous birding field guide New York, NY - Is it an American Goldfinch or a Baltimore Oriole? Chickadee or Sparrow? What sound does a Bald Eagle make, and does it look anything like that bird over there? Available to bird watchers for the first time on mobile phones, through Wildtones.com, is the Peterson® Mobile Field Guide to Backyard Birds, with bird information specific to the mobile phone user's geographic area. Gone are lost moments of fumbling through bird information not intended for your area! With 51.3 million bird watchers in the United States alone (Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2006 survey), birding is America's number-one outdoor activity. Now, Wildtones.com brings Americans of every age personalized birding information from the country's premier bird-watching resource directly to Internet-enabled mobile phones. Peterson bird images, maps, and descriptive text on attracting specific birds to America's backyards-and much more, including bird calls-are now available through two Wildtones.com subscription levels. Wildtones® has sifted through 900 North American bird species in the latest version of the Peterson Field Guide to categorize them by zip code. The basic $1.99 monthly subscription to the field guide, available through Wildtones.com, sorts through all of those birds to bring you the twenty most commonly found birds in your area for immediate identification. For one monthly charge, birders have unlimited access to all the information based on that month's zip code. Traveling? The zip code for your subscription can be changed for the month of your travel (continental U.S. only) and subscribers will receive the same high-quality, easily accessible information for birds specific to that area. Now, no matter where you are, educational opportunities between parents and children, outdoor enthusiasts and birding groups, intersect with hand-held technology. At $2.99 per month,Wildtones Premium Service gives "bird call" a whole new meaning. In addition to the Peterson Field Guide amenities available through its basic service, Wildtones.com provides individual bird calls for each bird. Birders with iPhones and smartphones will want to subscribe to the Premium Service. "Roger Tory Peterson was an innovator, as evidenced by the publication of his groundbreaking Field Guide to the Birds in 1934. If he were a young birder today, he surely would have been at the forefront of birding technology, embracing the digital possibilities available to us now," says Lisa White, director of guidebooks at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing. "His mission was to educate as many people as possible about nature, and the availability of his work on a mobile platform through Wildtones.com serves to further that goal and carry on his legacy." "Wildtones is honored to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Roger Tory Peterson's birth and the republishing of his invaluable field guide with another first-a mobile field guide using his materials," says Deborah Rivel, president of Wildtones.com. "Given that he was a trailblazer himself-creating the first guide to birds anyone could use-we think it is only appropriate that the Peterson Field Guide be the first available for the mobile phone." "This mobile venture also exemplifies the ongoing mission at Wildtones-to use technology as a way to better understand and appreciate the natural world," says Rivel. "Now backyard birders have a convenient and simple way to easily identify the birds around them using images and sounds, which are an important part of learning about birds." Wildtones® is a division of Wildsight Productions, Inc., which was founded in 1991 by Deborah Rivel, internationally acclaimed wildlife film producer and director. Headquartered in New York, the mission of Wildsight Productions is to promote human understanding of wildlife and the environment through the media using sound, images, and film-the goal being to inform, entertain, and enlighten. # # # # # # Deborah Rivel, founder of Wildsight Productions, Inc. and Wildtones.com, has a dedicated, prestigious, and noteworthy background of working on behalf of animals and conservation through animal-related television and film projects, including the documentary Life with Big Cats: Tippi Hedren and Shambala, coproduced with Discovery's Animal Planet Channel and Canal Plus, and a series of six wildlife programs for U.S. public television that focused on human/animal relationships. Wildsight programs have won numerous awards, including seven Emmy Awards, three International Chris Awards, and several Genesis Awards for their support of animal rights in the media. |