Change afoot?

 

I don't know whether it is just an age thing but I feel change in the air.

Not just in relation to the wintry weather we had around Storm Bert last week but other stuff too. Change seems to sneak up on us and before we know it we lose track of where we were.

Recently Gavin Haig touched on some Social Media changes he has made here . The move from Twitter or X as it is now called to a platform called Bluesky has taken a surge recently in the Naturalist / Birding community. So much so it has been referred to as an 'X-odus'. 

Stewchat has also started down this route to try to get away from the cesspit that Elon has created from a once interesting format. Now, on Twitter ( calling it X is like saying Lapland Longspur to me) we are inundated with ads and bots daily. I block two or three every single day who are clearly not people socialising... On Bluesky this has not happened - yet, so all my bird and natural history related posts will be on there keeping Twitter just to get some bits of info . I'll not be following anyone else on there either, I feel it has had its day to be honest. We will see.

While we are on about this change, a more personal move for me has been starting to use eBird regularly.

eBird is an American based online recording site developed by boffins at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology but it is a worldwide platform. Its used to record bird counts , basically, but has other uses too. Say if you are going on holiday somewhere new, you can look that area up for birding sites and get up to the minute info about what has been seen or occurring there. Not just rare bird info, but ALL bird info.

For example, now, if I go out birding, I use my phone eBird App to begin a list. This maps the route you take and you count down all species seen on the template as you go. Its a doddle. You can see one such list in my previous post.

eBird is also a good way to keep local patch lists, and to see the lists of others too. At the minute I am data crunching all of my previous birding notes that stretch back to 1985. I just wish I had kept notes earlier! It will take some time to get 40 years worth of birding into the website but its an interesting task to do on a dark night.

When looking back in my old logs, am up to 1991 now, I can see massive changes in the bird life locally in that period. Its amazing how many Whinchats we used to see, or Corn Buntings, Hawfinch, Little Owls, Pochard and Smew. On the flip side there were only single figure Pinkfeet counts, no Buzzards or Egrets. Siskins  and Gadwall were quite low too.

Its a very nostalgic exercise but it might take some time...