Guide to the Guide
Our guide can be confusing. We know that. Here is a guide that will help you understand and use our guide to the best of your ability.
Disclaimer:
Homepage
On the Homepage there are a few features that are good to get used to for effective interaction with our website. The homepage will always have a short "about us" and a little about how to use our guide. It will also have, at the bottom, an updated list of the most recent articles along with a link to all of our articles.
Starting with the top left portion of the screen and working our way down, The Navigation Bar is how you will switch between our pages, and how you will access the guide. Once you tap the three horizontal lines, a slate gray menu will appear from the left side of the screen. On it there will be all of the website pages. By clicking one of these pages it will bring you to said page. The Home Button's function is quite simple. When you press the home button it will take you back to this homepage. The Search will let you type in words and will search our entire website for words that match what you typed. It will present you with links to the pages that have matching words. Buttons like the "See Changes" button will bring you to another page, in this case, the "Recent Changes" page. The Information button will let you know how long ago the website was last updated and gives you the option to report abuse of google's services, as this website was created using Google Sites.
Guide
There are many birds in Arlington, so they are organized by type of birds, then in these categories, by species. The similar species are displayed next to each other for easy comparison. Since the Guide contains images of almost all the birds, it may be a little slow to load initially.
All of the categories at the top of the page are links to further down on the page where the species are listed, with images, for each category. Some categories only have one or two birds, but it is still important to classify them separately.
Under some categories there are birds that have underlined names, and some that don't. The ones with underlined names are links to an entire page about them. The ones that are not underlined do not have entire pages about them, but they will come soon.
Species
The "cover" to each species has an image of the birds along with the name and gender of the bird in the photo. If there is an asterisk (*) after the age and gender of the bird, then that means that the image was not taken in Arlington, VA. There is also an arrow at the bottom that, when clicked, will bring you further down the page.
Under the cover of the page there will be a symbol or symbols that relate to when we can see the Bird. The symbols below headings such as "Visual identification" only apply to the information in that section until a different heading or symbol is presented. Under "Visual Identification" the symbols apply to the plumage, that with many birds change based on the season, so it is important to use these symbols to declare what season the pictures or descriptions are relevant.
Underneath the section links, there are the sections, which have features that can be very useful for understanding a Bird. There are Image Galleries, which are slide shows containing images of the bird. To switch from one image to the next, there are arrows. Underneath the Gallery there are dots, each represents an image in the Gallery.
Yes, our guide can be confusing, but with this Guide to the Guide we hope that you can easily use our guide. If you still have questions about how to use the guide, you can contact us at birdersguideswarlingtonva@gmail.com.