Well, they were mostly right.
Players get points for finding certain birds in each area.
The scenes of each area are made up of several photographic slides of the actual locations. But when you call up your binoculars, you get a goofy pair of hands with an outline of the glasses that you can scan around the photo with your computer mouse. Once you spot a bird, a short video of that species starts to play. There are more than a hundred such videos in the game. Bird Watcher also has authentic bird calls and songs that were taken from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.