A New Site for the New Year
Mike Freeman has retired the NYC Bird Report. However I do plan to leave the submission forms up for the indefinite future because I know some people liked to use them for creating personal day lists. Prospect Park submissions sent through that form will still be added to the Prospect Park database that tracks records going back more than a century, even if they are not currently available on the Web. Maybe one day I’ll have time to recreate the work Mike did, but I hope this is at least somewhat helpful for now.
In the meantime, I’ve been playing with creating a new site/forum/social network for Five Borough Birders at Ning. If people would like to use the blog to announce rarities, and post day lists and trip reports, please do so. It doesn’t merge and accumulate the reports from different observers like NYC Bird Report did, but it will let us at least see who’s reporting what. It also has some features NYC Bird report didn’t including general discussions and photo, video, and audio uploads.
Once you register, you can post blog entries, ask questions in the forums, and upload photos and videos to share. It’s free and open to whatever people feel like talking about, within the general scope of wild birds in New York City. (Yes, Rock Pigeons count.) The first topic is the most undervisited site in New York City.
Ning makes it really easy to set up sites like this so if anyone feels like putting up a similar site for Westchester, Niagara, Long Island, Santa Clara County, Minnesota, or wherever, it doesn’t take but a few minutes. Enjoy!
