I went to a place and I saw a bird. Then I went to another place and I saw another bird and several of another species of bird. Then I saw a really cool bird. Then I saw some more birds. Finally, I saw a bunch more birds and then I went home.
-Way too many posts in the bird blogosphere
Is there any reason to spend your time on a straightforward accounting of another birder’s recent outing? If a bird blogger is an amazing wordsmith or has a unique voice – most aren’t and don’t – then the post might be fun to read. If a bird blogger is an expert wildlife photographer or artist – most aren’t – then the post might be nice to see. If a bird blogger is based somewhere really fascinating or visits astounding places – most aren’t and don’t – then the post might be good because of the novelty value. But if a blog post is an un-or-poorly illustrated, straightforward account of a birder’s visit to a local park that lacks amazing birds or scenery is there any reason to read it?
Readers like good pictures of birds.
Birders bird their local patches more than anywhere else. Bird bloggers are no exception. And while the accumulation of information about a local patch is important, rewarding, and could be of long term scientific value, it is boring to read. Really boring. Paint-drying boring. So why the heck are blog posts about birding local patches the most common type of blog post that bird bloggers produce?
Blogs started out, for all intents and purposes, as online, public diaries. It is easy to fall back to that type of writing when one is uninspired or just trying to feed the gaping maw that is the internet. Taking a walk, seeing some common birds and then coming home and writing about going to see them is easy. No muss, no fuss. And no interest. It is no wonder that the vast majority of bird blogs get very little traffic. If what is written on bird blogs is boring to even other birders then what are the odds that non-birders are going to find the writing compelling?
Some folks are probably muttering about glass houses and stones right about now. Yes, I have been known to write straightforward accounts of a day’s (or an hour’s) birding. But I also enliven trip reports with different perspectives, excellent photographs (if you don’t mind me twisting my arm to pat myself on the back), and marvelous places. And the posts that have any of these three elements are far better posts than the typical, straightforward posts.
Readers like pretty pictures.
If you are going to insist upon continuing to blog trip reports then you could do much worse than to blog like Redgannet. He is, I think, the premiere trip report bird blogger blogging right now. He travels all over the world, sees great birds, gets tack-sharp pictures, and brings a marvelous and entertaining perspective to all of this activity. Not only that, but his blog posts often contain detailed information about how to reach the sites he is birding, the costs of different forms of transport, and information about safety, food, and the locals. Despite all of that awesomeness his blog gets very little recognition. So if you think you can write as well as Redgannet while traveling all over the world and taking amazing pictures then go for it! But don’t expect to see a ton of blog traffic pouring onto your blog.
What is a sad sack bird blogger to do? Our online ecological niche is small. We must enlarge it and we must engage with a larger audience. Writing great posts about the behaviors of common birds that people tend to notice (and Google!) is a good way to engage a new audience. Writing about where the world of birding intersects with other worlds is another. Most important is to let some of your personality and joie de vivre shine through into your blog posts. Don’t write clinically or scientifically or dryly. Write like you mean it, write like you are arguing, write like a human! Find your voice and use it! And for the sake of the bird blog audience don’t write like a machine, churning out post after post of the same old same old. Your audience, which will grow, will appreciate your efforts.
What do you do to make your bird blog more interesting to the average internet surfer?
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Wow Corey! A thought provoking read for sure. I think the one thing that I do to make my blog more interesting is to write about things that excite me. Obviously, great bird photos make for better bird blog posts in my opinion because I think birders are visual people. After all, we spend most of our time looking through equipment that brings these beautiful creatures closer to us and gives us the opportunity to photograph them as well.
That being said, the most fascinating thing about birds to me is their behavior. I love watching birds and enjoying their beauty but trying to determine why they do what they do is the most interesting part of birding for me.
I usually do a lot of research when writing a post because I am interested in not only enjoying the visual beauty of the birds I’m writing about but learning about their behavior. Where can they be found, what type of nest do they build and in what habitat? Why do they show up in my neck of the woods in September, hang around most of the year, and then disappear at breeding time?
I believe that bird watching is a life long learning experience and the thrill of seeing a species new to you and discovering its secrets can be a very intoxicating endeavor.
Thanks for writing this post! By the way, nice photos! 😉
i don’t have a blog (yet? muahaha, i may unleash my bird paintings on the internet yet) but i do sometimes read trip reports on local patches…that are local to me. so in that respect if they are at aleast somewhat well written they can be helpful to me. i don’t live in a really great birding location so the few trip report/blogs based in the area are really appreciated.
otherwise, yeah, i like to read about more tha what bird was where. i live to know what they were doing and about the location. more general travel writing with a focus on birds than a ‘trip report’.i like background, a post that can transport me to somehwere else for a few minutes on my lunch break. also, nice pictures.
This is a mean-spirited and unnecessary post. Yes, there are many less-than stellar blogs out there, and not just about birds, but about any topic you can imagine. And yes, there are many blogs, including birding blogs, that are really wonderful, with artistic presentations, stunning photos, lucid or even lovely prose etc., and these justly deserve our admiration and any fame they develop. But many people create blogs for their own pleasure, to document their own experiences in their own way, perhaps to share with family or friends or other local birders. You are creating a problem where none exists, and slighting many birders who might not be up to your standards. This is another example of elitism and competitiveness that taints some corners of the birding world.
I write a blog that covers my birding adventures, in addition to other topics of interest. I don’t list my sighting, but tend to write about a particular species, or my ongoing observations about the birds at a particular patch. I am not a photographer so there are no bird photos to accompany my essays, so my blog probably wouldn’t be good enough for you. I don’t need to change it to suit anyone’s standards, including what anyone thinks “bird bloggers” OUGHT to do for the good of birding – it’s my blog, for my own pleasure.
Here’s what I suggest you do: Read the blogs you enjoy. Don’t read the ones that you think are beneath your notice.
@Corey @Larry – Both of you have been great examples to me of great bird blogging. I know I’m guilty of the occasional boring post, but I agree 100% with your analysis and feel I have come along way in the last three years. Pretty pictures make a huge difference in viewer appreciation. The ability to convey interesting facts in an engaging manner is a plus. Transmitting enthusiasm and passion is essential. And portraying your personality and unique voice is much more satisfying to read. I think that is why Sharon Stiteler (Birdchick), Bill Thompson III, and Julie Zickefoose have been so successful at blogging – they all ooze personality and it is captivating.
Feeling like I was writing the yellow sentences over and over again is one reason I cut back on trip reports, especially from my local patch. Now when I do a trip report, I usually give a short description of the birds I saw and let the remainder of the post be determined by what photographs I have on hand.
Consistently writing good posts on bird behavior is difficult because of the need for research and illustrative photos. It is definitely worth doing, though.
GREAT post Corey…I have been thinking this the entire time Ive been bird blogging, but have been unwilling to make a whole post about it at the risk of offending almost every other bird blogger! A ballsy move, I must say.
Variety is key. Photos are key. I think John and Nate both do an excellent job at keeping things fresh, and The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive and I try our best to keep things a bit weird.
I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with the trip report format (particularly if you have a lot of pictures and dont go deep into inane detail of birds you didnt photograph)…but at the same time I am in total agreement that I wish there was more variety out there.
5 gold stars for that opening statement, BTW.
@Larry: Your well researched and illustrated posts speak for themselves. And bird behavior is fascinating to everyone, I think, which is why I think it is the best way for a person with limited ability to travel to get the most bird blogging out of their local patch.
@crowbones: Go for it! Your comments here are germane, spelled correctly, and often insightful. And I agree that trip reports can be very useful to folks researching specific birding locations.
@Bird Blogger: Constructive criticism is not mean. If you took my post as mean I apologize. But if you are writing for yourself, for your pleasure, as you state, then you shouldn’t be concerned what I think anyway.
@John: The hard part is finding other things to feed the internet with, right? I have struggled with that and tend to do as you do, letting what I can photograph guide me. But I think that there are only so many gallery-style posts that I can do before they get to be overdone as well.
@Seagullsteve: Reading your blog is often like a breath of fresh air because it is so different from what any other bird blogger is doing. If only there were federal grants for creative bird blogging – you would definitely be among the first to get them. As for offending almost every other bird blogger, well, if they are only writing stuff like the yellow sentence then they need to be offended. Trip reports can be great…but there is a lot of space between “can” and “are.”
I do think that there is one important role played by even dull trip reports. If I’m traveling to a new place that isn’t a premier birding destination, there’s still a good a chance that there are some locally common species in boring local parks that will, nevertheless, be exciting to me – and I want to know where they’re seen week in and week out, so I have the best shot at them. Boring, trip-report heavy local bird blogs – and even more boring, trip-report heavy static web sites from the days before blogging got huge – were my key resources when the I.T. and I drove from New York to Montana and I only had a day per state to pick up what new birds I could.
I think those trip report posts would be better used if there was some central website were someone could look up a location and see what different bloggers saw there…
Robert–thanks for the love.
Steve is excellent and weird and fun to read. John is always informative. Larry has amazing photos of bird behavior. Carrie is such a good writer even her regular trips in the field are worth reading. At the risk of turning this into a lovefest, the people who have posted comments here are doing a great job keeping readers (if I am Joe Blog-reader) engaged and informed.
I can only speak for myself, but I spend as much of my time in the field trying to come up with a narrative as I do looking for birds. I hate boring trip reports, and while I’m easily guilty of them from time to time, I do try to come up with a hook that makes a day in the field something worth plowing through and I spend a lot of time thinking about that hook while I’m birding.
If I’ve got a good story, I might not worry so much about getting photos. If I can’t find anything worthwhile to write about, I’ll work harder on photos. If neither work, well, I either put up something I know will be boring or I try to come up with something else. At the very least, it keeps my mind sharp, I guess.
Thought provoking, Corey, and questions we must all ask ourselves. Big names like Thompson, Zickefoose, and Stiteler have established an audience that fawns on their every soundbite. Lesser-known names? Well, we just work our little niches. We have to be realistic, knowing who we are, what our niche is, being proud of that niche, and working it. The occasional blog comment that says that the reader just found you which thanks you for what you do is what let’s you know you’re doing a good thing. I feel each of us can make a difference in our own sometimes little way.
Thank you for putting in to words exactly what I have been finding in my reaction to browsing around blogs and what not.
A few thoughts:
Paragraph style trip reports are tedious to read; list style are a little better. I know these are great records to have and show alot about not just the area, but also who has some local knowledge. IMO they are best kept on litservs / yahoo groups where they will be there and searchable when you want them.
I see some posts on yahoo groups that are copied lists of a person’s eBird submissions. For actual data I think eBird is great, in many ways, (and would benefit greatly from all these posted sightings).
A blogger, I suppose one will want to think of what kind of birder you want to attract as an audience, there are as many different audiences as there are ways to enjoy birds. Mixing it up could be a good thing. Seeing a good photo and the promise of learning something fundamental is always motivation for me to read something.
Thanks again! Dianne C.
I second Sharon’s interest in a centralized index of trip reports.
Corey, remember that not everyone has the talent or the ambition that 10kb can muster–and that all this e-stuff is e-phemeral anyway. Nobody writes about birds for the ages.
@Carrie: There might be very specific utility for reports that mention all the birds seen but they aren’t fun to read for any reason but seeing what is in a location.
@Birdchick: Agreed…
@Nate: Yeah, the folks commenting here are some pretty good bloggers. And your trip reports are another exception but it is obvious that you put thought into them and work hard to make them better than the vast majority out there.
@The Zen Birdfeeder: I like to think that anyone who puts the time and energy into bird blogging and continually tries to improve what they are putting out can “make it” in the bird blogging world in terms of building an audience. Those who excel tend to be people who really pour their heart and their personality into it in addition to their time and energy.
@Dianne: Listservs seem so much more valuable to me in terms of figuring what to see where whether one is in an unfamiliar or familiar place. I certainly wouldn’t want to see blogs reduced to lists of birds! And if one is really looking to see what can be found where then the eBird database is a wonderful place to start!
@Rick Wright: We have less talent and ambition than luck and doggedness but, yeah, I can see your point. But I don’t know why you would say that nobody writes about birds for the ages, especially considering how often your own writing is based upon cracking open dusty old tomes. On 10,000 Birds we have found that some of our posts from years ago can suddenly become much-visited and other posts are perennial favorites. Will our blog posts be around in fifty years, a hundred years, a thousand years? I hope so!
Point taken, Corey. While I try to write well and with a sense of humour, and I feel my photos are not terrible and the locations I visit are esoteric if not exotic, after 2+ years of regular blogging, I still have trouble gaining an audience to turn away. I attempt to network by following and commenting on other like-minded (and geographically similar) blogs, but these efforts go for the most part unrewarded. Very discouraging; your post is nevertheless an encouragement to up my game and persevere.
stuart
@Stuart- If it’s any consolation, I’ve been blogging for four years now and my traffic is so-so. I don’t claim to have any insight, but perseverance seems to be the number one trait for successful blogging.
Are you reading this Mother?
….Mother?
Don’t make me come upstairs!
Thanks for the write-up Corey.
Traffic figures are for the masochistic and only serve to dampen and depress. Don’t let yourself be blog-flogged, write about what interests you. If no-one else finds that interesting, then celebrate your uniqueness and welcome to the huge section of the web that is the Low-audience Blog Club.
Redgannet was intended as a snapshot of a day in a place and what birds one might reasonably expect to see there on a casual visit, then I go somewhere else and then I go home.
Primarily it was aimed at a target audience in an attempt to lure my consumer, brand-led colleagues from the shops, but has not had much success it that respect.
I honestly got bored writing a blog full of trip reports. I’m glad this issue was brought up from the side of the reader. About the only good thing a trip report blog does in its existence is act as a travel guide. My now-dead blog occasionally brings an email from someone out of the area asking where they can go to find good birds. They will cite a few entries I had on specific locations, and ask for directions to them. But that is the only use I ever got out of keeping a trip report birding blog.
Good post Corey. You are absolutely right, our niche must reach more people. We deserve it and the birds deserve it.
In a way BirdingBlogs was a reaction to boring birding blogs – and to the fact that many good blogs did not get the traffic they deserved. And exactly the points you mention were part of the strategy: some nice large size pictures (I still can’t understand why some bloggers insist on small size pictures, which you have to click to see what they are – just go for 600-700px straight away – and they can still be clickable for larger size if that is what you want), interesting & varied text, some exotic places, some seriousness, some humor, some conservation, lots of sharing of your collegues’ stuff, etc – that is a winning formula.
Multi-author blogs may be a the way to go for some people – it takes a lot of time to produce read-worthy content, and getting together with others help that.
Even trip reports can be made interesting if one simply does not list every bird. Try to concentrate on the essence of the day in the field.
Rick Wright often have posts that pics out something particular on a trip that he has done. His posts from Peru for example last year were great to read.
Birdingblogs Rich Hoyer for example reports weekly from Cristalino Jungle Lodge and manages to keep every post as interesting or even more interesting than the previous. Just check the last one on the Sunbittern.
Lastly, I’d like to make a mention of one of the best blogposts I have read in a long time, that of Dawn’s Dilemma to help or not to help a bird in distress.
I think many bloggers who blog from a local patch can do much better in just posting the full birdlist to ebird, and then tell a particular story about one or two birds – and I think photographs are essential. Even if one does not have photographs oneself, one can find good photographs licensed Creative Common on Flickr to use (giving credit of course). At the end of the post, just link to your daylist on ebird (you can do that right?) for anyone interested in a full list.
I’m not a skilled photographer, writer or birder. I don’t travel to exotic locations or see many exotic birds. I’m bored by myself when I write trip accounts but resort to that if I’m too lazy or don’t have enough time to put something more creative together. My goal is to keep the blog active by posting something-anything-about once a week and then come up with something interesting once in a while.
-This is a blunt, cold, slap- in- the- face post which is why I found it so interesting to read!
Planning the trip I want to do is why I search for trip reports. I don’t want to see pretty pictures; I want to see the birds once I reach the birding destination/s; that’s why I use trip reports.
It is more important to me to get logistical info. I am a good enough birder that I will see/hear birds once I get there, but I want to see what others dealt with in getting there.
Examples: Best/least expensive places to stay
What transportation to use
Good restaurants in the area if any
Directions to the birding site
I’ve already purchased the field guide; I don’t need any pretty pics to help or entice me.
Interesting perspective, JP. I appreciate the same level of pragmatism in a trip report, but don’t mind pretty pictures along with it.