Even as we write ( or rather even as we 'tweet'), Annette Baesel @abaesel is on her way to Bali, Indonesia  with her husband.  What makes the trip to this exotic tropical paradise is the fact that she is going to meet @bali_chris, her long distance birdwatching partner via Twitter.

We don't know about you but we have never heard about long distance bird watching before.  How does it work?  Let us hear it from Annette's own tweets:

*  no one seriously "long distance bird watches" normally...but this is how it happened. I'm planning a trip to Bali so ...

    * I search out interesting tweeters in Bali to tweet with. One fellow tweeting about the birds around his pool.

    * I had just got my Bali Bird book for my trip. so I asked him to describe the bird to me, size, color, beaks, legs, behavour

    * I researched in the book and came up w/ two candidates. I then searched for photos of them on the web...found good ones

    * And then attached them to the tweet for Chris to look at. Bingo! we've done this 5 times. we're 4 for 5. The last one was

    * a bird in borneo that I couldn't identify.

    * I can give you a list of some very cool birders who have serious blogs and use twitter to share interesting birds

    * AND (I'll have to go find this and send it to you), there is a type of radar that can identify migrating flocks of birds,

    * cool birding friends @singraham @burdr @hummingbird2 @WBeditor @birdingdude @Mainebirder @LRockwellatty @smido @dawnfine

    * more cool birding friends @screek @ladywoodpecker @birdingbev @kolibrix @margaretkinney @bluefinch @rachelbirder

    * And one more thing the Operation Migration people w/ the whooping cranes who follow the microlights? @operationmigration

    * @chris_bali is the only one so far. I have the book, he doesn't. He has the birds, I don't. Kind of a random twitter thing.

    * Some of the birders in the NE have started getting together for birding tweetups...I can't remember which ones however

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