At first glance you might think this is an awesome way to identify birds in the wild or in your backyard, by the song they sing. After all, it’s got a 54 page song book and a scanner that looks like a pen. This is just what you needed to identify birds by sound. Except it’s not quite what you think.

You scan the barcode for a bird, and then you can listen to a digital recording of the song from the speaker. That’s all well and good if you need to know what a bird sounds like, but it doesn’t help you identify a song you hear just now outside. The only thing to do is scan through all the damn birds in the book! In short, this device is for the birds!

[Bird identifier] VIA [Ohgizmo]