“I and the Bird” is three years old! That’s amazing. I remember the conversation Mike and I had when we first met back in 2005 (we went to Jamaica Bay if you’re interested) and he talked about an idea he’d had for a new blog carnival he was launching called “I and the Bird” (IATB). What did I think, he asked? What is a ‘blog carnival’, I replied? You really should find out because I’m hoping you’ll host the next one, he said…

To cut a long story short I did indeed host I and the Bird #2. I didn’t make an especially good job of it - who knew what hosting a blog carnival would evolve into - but what an interesting post it is to look back at. There have been far (far) more elaborate, more sophisticated, more eloquent presentations since those days, but as a record of the very early beginnings of what I still think is the best-written bird carnival on the web it’s worth re-visiting every once in a while - even if just to see who’s still blogging and who’s found other ways to spend their day!

Which brings me round to the subject that Mike chose for this Third Anniversary Edition of ‘I and the Bird’. “Why are you still blogging?” It also brings me round to the way Mike so typically asks a question that seems so simple on the surface, but which (I at least) always seem to require the cyber equivalent of a sheaf of A4 to fully answer. It’s quite extraordinary how a seemingly simple question can trigger in me a whole cascade of inter-related ideas and discursive blogging. I’ve been off exploring tangents I didn’t know I could reach. Twisting myself up in knots. Peering into locked rooms as it were. It’s probably time I enrolled in one of those “Writing Classes for very Verbose People” that you don’t see advertised nearly enough, but I will do my best to keep my thoughts concise and clear (I’m under no illusion that people visit IATB to hear what the host has to say after all).

So, why am I still bird blogging? Okay, here’s my answer Mike…

I made some pretty poor decisions when I was younger. For reasons I won’t go into I left school incapable of focussed thought. I spent an awfully long time drifting (I know Jo sometimes wants to ask me why I say I need her so much when I never seemed to need anyone before: the truth is that she anchored me, became my harbour after far too long at sea, and I never want to get so lost again). I knew from an early age I really loved birds - but I couldn’t quite pin down what it was I liked about them. I loved birding, but could never decide whether I actually liked looking for birds as much as I liked the excuse it gave me to get as far away from everything else as possible. I knew I wanted to do something to do with birds - but couldn’t decide what. Writing about them? Working with them? Working FOR them? Chasing them until I’d seen every one and then start all over again? I couldn’t decide, and before I knew it I’d gone past the point where I thought I still had an element of choice. (I know, it’s never too late - but that’s with YOUR brains not mine…)

I’ll tell you something. Years ago I went on a three-month birding trip to India and Nepal with two other birders. One of them was Paul Holt, now one of the world’s best birders and a tour-leader of international repute. The other was Richard Crossley, he of Cape May and shorebird ID fame. Both of them were (still are) supremely focussed people. They seemed to know exactly what they wanted, what path they would follow, how they would get from A to B and on to C, D, and E. And I don’t mean just on that trip. I mean their lives. I often wonder what they made of me, lolloping along, unable to retain identification criteria that they seemed to be able to incorporate into their thought processes as easily as opening up a folder and dropping in a file. I certainly wasn’t impressed with myself. I came back off that trip with severe tick fever and a severely dented ego. My brain was scrambled eggs.

Maybe time and distance are exaggerating my awkwardness and their aptitude, but I don’t think so because my brother Nial makes me feel the same way. He doesn’t mean to, he just does. I know he works very hard to make his grasp of detail and insight seem natural, but I also know that I could work twice as hard and still not be able to hold so tightly to a thought or an idea. There’s just something very messy about the way my brain works that I don’t recognise in the birders I really admire. I need to see things over and over again before its image is fixed, to hear a bird song repeatedly and then hear it again and again before I’ll recognise it the next time. They seem to be able to absorb the detail, the structure, the cadence, the tone, the slight inflection, the length, the depth, the relationship, the whole in a single sweep. You can almost hear the click as everything locks into place. My gears grind a whole lot more slowly and noisily…

And yet, here I am now, one of three writers on what is by most definitions a pretty successful blog. A few weeks ago I read a post by Clare over at The House and Other Arctic Musings which included a description of 10,000 Birds as the “the 600 lb gorilla of bird blogs”. My first thought was that he’d meant it in an “elephant in the room” kind of a way, but Clare’s an extremely eloquent and precise writer and if he meant ‘elephant’ he’d have said ‘elephant’: I like to think that what he meant is that 10,000 Birds is now too big to be ignored, that we - in a good way I hope - put some of the muscle into bird blogging. That we provide some of the grunt behind a movement of information dispersal, commentary, education, that is reaching far further than many media commentators ever expected it would.

If my interpretation is correct then that is a truly great thing to be able to say. The odd thing about it, to me, is that I don’t seem to have made any plans to be a part of 10,000 Birds, yet here I am. And for once I really want to know what to do now that I am here…

I think, though, that I do now know, and I expect you’ll be glad to know that it’s relevant to Mike’s question and this post. Let me explain. I read a comment on another blog that was made in response to an identification I’d made as part of our 10,000 Birds Clinic. The comment was along the lines of “Thanks to the guys at 10,000 Birds - now these are serious birders…”, and it really made me stop and think. Serious. That could mean serious as in really very good, or as in hardcore, all-out, heavyweight birders (or I suppose serious as in deadly dull). Personally I don’t think we’re deadly dull, but neither do I think that we’re really very good or particularly heavyweight. We might be. Comparatively perhaps we are. But I don’t think so…(But then again I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even if a great big neon sign on Times Square said that we were. Even if I turned on the radio right now and heard someone discussing bird bloggers and shouting that we were. I wouldn’t because I have a skull full of mush…)

And yet (as Shakira almost said) the stats don’t lie. We do get visited quite a lot. And some people feel that we merit the term serious, or that we’re a 600lb gorilla. And it’s that that keeps me blogging - but not, perhaps, for the reasons you might think.

Despite what I think about what skills I personally do or do not have, I’m part of a successful team. I’m part of a mass that is greater than me alone and I’ve come to realise over the last few months what that could translate into: conservation. It turns out that I do really love birds after all, and I love going birding for more reasons than I can total but birds are definitely right up there with that need to escape. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy travelling abroad to go birding (though I do try, I really do try as any regular 10,000 Birds readers will hopefully appreciate) and how much I enjoy meeting other birders and bloggers. But what I really want to do is conservation work. I want to feel like I’m doing something to help conserve the very things I love and care so deeply about.

I understand completely that coming from an unqualified blogger who spends most of the year hurtling across the skies in a jumbo jet that may seem a bit far-fetched to some people, but it seems quite reasonable to me. Why blog though? One argument (and it’s one I have with myself repeatedly) might be that if I got off the planes and did another job that didn’t involve burning tons of fuel every hour I could benefit the environment and the birds in it far more effectively than writing paragraphs of text that relatively few people will ever read. It’s hard to counter that except to say that I am where I am, and I’m really trying to make the best of the circumstances I’ve somehow found myself in (I didn’t grow up wanting to be a flight attendant, I grew up with seratonin problems).

I’m not the writer I’d like to be by any means (I wish I could conjure time and place out of the air like Pete McGregor or distil out the essence of science as clearly as Nick Sly), but maybe I don’t need to be. What being part of 10,000 Birds perhaps means is that I have the opportunity to be taken seriously despite a lack of specific training, to be thought of as having weight without having a degree to flex. It means that - if I manage things properly - I could actually do something that I’ll be proud of (which, you might have inferred, is quite important to me)…And, trust me, if I can do that so can anyone else…

I’ve been saying to Mike and Corey for quite a while that I would like 10,000 Birds to become more involved in what I keep describing as ’small-scale community projects’. Not for us to change direction or drop one thing in favour of another, but to become even more multi-headed (the 600lb hydra of bird blogs perhaps, but hopefully without the stinky breath?). I’m sure that M and C are getting fed up telling me to go for it, and they’ll be relieved to have been copied into a couple of emails recently that appear to be setting solid foundations for what has so far been a rather ricketty construction (as relieved as you folks who have just realised that I’m coming to a point finally).

Last month I was lucky enough to photograph the little-known and Endangered Sharpe’s Longclaw Macronyx sharpei just outside Nairobi, Kenya. When I posted the images, which I knew from searching the web were themselves pretty scarce, I also wrote “Lastly, if anyone reading this feels that I - or 10,000 Birds - can support work to help conserve this beautiful bird please email”. Who knew. Maybe someone out there would sense that I meant it, that I genuinely want to help - that maybe they could see the potential that I think 10,000 Birds has to offer to conservationists worldwide (sure, we’re not BirdLife, but even BirdLife can’t get involved with everything they get to asked to support)…

To my absolute delight a team of researchers mailed me within a day or two to say that my timing had been perfect as they were just about to start a large survey to pinpoint exactly where the longclaw was still extant so that conservation measures could be put in place. Would 10,000 Birds like to be part of the collaboration?

Would we ever! In fact I felt like mailing back and saying that such a venture is EXACTLY the reason I’m still bird blogging, despite the time it takes, the strain it places on my home-life, the rising concern that I may be physically addicted to it, and the nagging doubts that I’m actually any good at it…(I didn’t of course, I thought instead I’d save it for this post). But on a less flippant note, just how wonderful would it be if my blogging could actually result in something so useful and potentially important that even I couldn’t dismiss it out of hand? Fulfilling, worthwhile, exciting, a part of something much larger and more important - now THAT’S all the reason I need to be still blogging now and into the forseeable future!

(Of course, just posting about something won’t change the world. It needs an audience to become involved and rise to the challenge too. Which is the next element of this new direction I’m hoping to bring to your attention in the next week or so…keep an eye out for the upcoming posts and please join in.)

Talking of joining in, there’s no doubt whatsoever that I need to turn now to the excellent correspondents who made the effort to answer Mike’s original question:

* Why do you, in spite of all the other birding-related activities you engage in professionally and/or recreationally, put so much work into your blog?
* What carried you through the tough times, the writer’s block, the scarcity of readers, to the point you’ve now reached?
* Why, when so many millions have tried yet failed to maintain even a sporadic blog, are you so actively engaged?

Tough questions demanding some reflection, clear-thinking, and perhaps a smidgeon of humility? Good questions are open to any amount of interpretation, and the bloggers who’ve taken part in this, the Third Anniversary of IATB, have clearly given the issues some deep thought…so let’s waste no further time in finding out what they have to say.

• First up is Wanderin’ Weeta, the free-spirited blogger from the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia who (perhaps counter to her instinct) sticks to the question Mike asked and answers with Why, why, oh why? - which sounds like the kind of exortation I usually give when life seems impossible to decipher, but not so here. Weeta’s post contains the lovely line that “shared joy is double the joy. Hence, I blog.” (Why I couldn’t come up with something that goes straight to the heart of the matter like that I’ll never know…)
• Another blogger that gets stuck straight in is Larry The Backyard Birdman whose post is preceded by a photo of an Acorn Woodpecker captioned ““How Could You Ask Me That Question?” It seems perfectly obvious to this enthusiastic writer - and reading his thoughts it seems perfectly obvious to me too (well, now it does, anyway)…
• Eva over at the Flying Mullet illustrates her answer with photos of a lifer that she might have probably deleted were it not for the sanguine and consoling observation that - actually - “blogging…doesn’t have to be perfect”. You said it, Eva. Cue loud cheers from this part of the UK! Why does she blog…pop across and see my friends.
• Over at The Greenbelt, the Ridger - a free-thinker if there ever was one - knows exactly why she blogs: it’s the audience participation that she appreciates so highly (and don’t we bloggers just thrive on audience participation?). She’s right of course. Check out her post and join in right now…
• Now would any IATB be complete without a few thoughts from John B at A DC Birding Blog? I think not. In terms of blogs ADCBB has been around for aeons, and like 10,000 Birds is in a continual process of re-invention and improvement. So does John still get to blog about birds? Not so much lately as he freely admits, but he knows where his heart still lies…
• The ever-productive Liza Lee over at It’s just me (’just’, Liza, ‘just’?) has actually written TWO posts for this edition of IATB (well, she claims one is written by her dog Ruby, who looks a smart hound but surely isn’t that clever?). Like all of us bloggers she has good reasons to blog. Go find out why…
• Gallicissa, who birds in the wonderful location of Sri Lanka, is still blogging despite the time it takes up and the drain it’s been on his other writing efforts. He explains all at a birder in an endemic hotspot. One of the reasons? “I have not renounced my vanity yet. But I am working on it.” Wonderful stuff -and the rest of the post is just as good!
• Another blogger with a reputation to savour and who’s grappled with the IATB challenge is Wrenaissance Woman, who answers the question “Why?” with “The short answer is that I enjoy it”. Of course WW’s readers know that there’ll be more to her words than just that…
• They say that a picture is worth a thousand words (I should remember that next time I’m asked to host one of these) and Klaus at Virtua Gallery has proved why in the most eloquent way. It’s good to share, and I for one am grateful that Klaus is so darn generous. If you ever doubted the skills of some of the world’s bird bloggers, check out his portfolio of Great Egrets and doubt no more…
• Another generous soul blogs at The Zen Birdfeeder. Nancy Castillo (who authors TZB) knows precisely why she still blogs, ‘despite the difficulties, time-pressures, and other things to do’: because she feels her blog “helps fill an important niche in the bird blog community”. Her blog is YOUR blog, she says, which is just the sort of attitude we here at 10,000 Birds thoroughly approve of…
• Seabrooke, a Canadian who blogs over at the Marvelous in Nature, says in her long and excellent post that “it helps that I love to write”. There’s an element of self-deprecation in the statement, but she needn’t apologise in the slightest: I’m personally very glad that she felt the urge to be so loquacious. Go and read her post and you’ll understand why (and while you’re at it have a look at the fantastic pictures of a milk snake she’s posted here)
• N8, the ever-enthusiastic blogger who writes The Drinking Bird is also pondering Mike’s question, and reveals that he is - as he puts it - approaching an anniversary himself: his “first bloggiversary or annibloggery or blog-day”. I would have sworn N8 had been around longer than that - I feel like I’ve been there since the beginning anyway, and I’m still a dedicated fan…N8’s thoughts are as usual pertinent, concise, and worth reading. What are you waiting for? Click that link…
• Another blogger I thought had been around much longer than a year (well, a year and a few months) is Patrick who occupies The Hawk Owl’s Nest. Patrick’s one of the very few bloggers I’ve actually met, and he writes exactly like the person he is: with charm, honesty, and enthusiasm. Why does he keep blogging? Go and find out, my friends…
• Ah, here’s yet another blogger I would unhesitatingly recommend to anyone looking for a good read: Duncan, who over at Ben Cruachan (and which is now sub-titled “Natural History”) takes a slightly different line (typical Aussie!) and has written a personal explanation to “Pastor Mike” as to why he has been straying from all things birdy lately. It’s an articulate and beautifully illustrated confession - but I’m not sure he’s really feeling as repentant as he claims…
• And lastly we come to Summer who has been blogging longer (I think I’m right in saying this) than anyone else on this page - since August 4th 2004! She’s turned her hand to many things and many blogs (which may or may not be an oblique and terrible pun) but on her ‘birdiest’ incarnation - Naturalist Notebook has come to realise - as has so many of today’s contributors - that “I just enjoy it”. Good for her I say. Do most of us have to have a better reason than that (okay, yes, I know, I am a little odd and needy as it happens, and I have those darn feelings of under-achievement to listen to…)?
• Lastly, I said? Heck, I almost missed a post from one of the web’s most unique voices, Clare whose writing on his Arctic home has been a staple of my blog reading for a long, long time. Clare can approach a subject from as oblique an angle as anyone I know, then focus in as skilfully as you could wish for. Go visit The House and Other Arctic Musings and see for yourself…(and apologies again, Clare, for missing your mail first time round)

So, Mike, you have your answers, and - as you suspected and hoped - they have arrived in a plethora of interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking posts. Thanks everyone for making it so enjoyable to put together (and apologies for the slight delay in getting it online - jet-lag really can be a fearsome creature to deal with sometimes).

Finally may I ask all the contributors who contributed, all those who thought about contributing but didn’t have the time, and all those looked at Mike’s questions and thought “Hmm, not sure I can answer that right now” to raise a glass and toast the mighty I and The Bird - in human terms she may well be just a toddler, but as Carnivals go she’s a venerable oldie! [Hey, many thanks to Amila of http://gallicissa.blogspot.com who’s just sent IATB a superb e-birthday card: just click this link to see it PS. I’ve just had to play it to Evie FIVE times she loves it so much!]

Thanks, and see you next time when IATB travels to Patrick and that Hawk Owl’s Nest of his. There’s no special subject, so send your links for anything you’ve written that’s about birds or is bird-related to Mike at mike AT 10000birds DOT com or directly to Patrick at pbelardo AT yahoo DOT com by Tuesday July 22. Cheers!