A treatise on bird watching was owned by the Human thief, Reki, during the Cold War. He kept the book in his house in Mannett Point, on the planet of Ord Mantell. Reki used the book to conceal schematics to a warehouse near his home, which he frequently stole from. To access the schematics, among other substitutions, every mention of the Mantellian flutterplume, a type of bird included in the treatise, had to be replaced with the number "3". Reki considered the book to be incredibly boring.
During the Separatist War, members of the Mantellian Separatist Movement took over Mannett Point and Reki was forced to flee his home, leaving the book behind. When the smuggler Ace needed to access the Separatist's personnel database, which was kept in the warehouse, Reki told him where to find the book and how to access the schematics. Ace successfully did so and used the schematics to enter the warehouse and download all data from the database.
The treatise on birds first appeared in the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, released by BioWare in 2011. In the game, the treatise is a key plot item in a quest in the Smuggler class storyline.