Blogging

Round Up Round Up

May 12, 2011 by Corey 3 Comments

To help fill the void that all of us need filling now that I and the Bird has sung its swan song I thought it might be helpful to take a look around the bird blogosphere and find the current compilations of links that everyone likes so much.  There are lots of bird and nature blogs out there, to say nothing of the wide variety of other sources of information about birds, and it can be amazingly cool to see another blogger’s distillation of birds on the internet.  It is very big world wide web and there are many great things on it to see.  Fortunately, there are quite a few folks out there sharing their favorites on a regular basis.

The best and longest running such compilation is Loose Feathers on A DC Birding Blog.  John Beetham has posted an incredible 295 Loose Feathers since November of 2005 and is still going strong (before he called it Loose Feathers John called the series Odds and Ends).  You can find Loose Feathers each and every Friday and peruse links in each of the several topics John covers (Birds and Birding News, Birds in the blogosphere, Environment and biodiversity, and Blog carnivals).  I always find at least a couple links to something interesting that I had not seen before and I love it when John picks a post from 10,000 Birds to link to.  It’s worth clicking around the Loose Feathers archives too.  For example, the first Loose Feathers, which included a cartoon about the bird flu, will bring you down the memory hole.

On the ABA Blog Nate Swick puts up a weekly round up of the best posts in the bird blogosphere every Monday.  Called Blog Birding, the posts highlight good writing, interesting topics, and posts that he thinks ABA members might be interested in reading.  Nate sometimes digs deep into the bird blogosphere to highlight little-known blogs and his curating skills are top notch.  The most recent edition is Blog Birding #28.

There are two self-selecting weekly bird photography carnivals that take advantage of the Mr. Linky widget to allow bloggers to share their bird photography with a wide audience.  Over at Birdfreak Eddie Calloway has guided Bird Photography Weekly through 141 editions.  Each Sunday morning you can submit your best post featuring shots of a single species of bird and click around to see what others have submitted.  There are some great images to be seen!  To learn more about Bird Photography Weekly just click though to the about page.  A more recent addition to the bird photography world is World Bird Wednesday on The Pine River Review which has gone through 24 weekly iterations and is more about sharing a single shot that leads back to your blog post then the gallery-focused posts that are encouraged at Bird Photography Weekly.

Sharon Stiteler, known throughout the bird blogosphere as the Birdchick, has been covering bird and bird blogging news in her podcasts which she does with the nearly-as-famous Non Birding Bill.  They have done 29 delightful podcasts so far and you can hear the most recent right here.

There are a couple of brand-spanking-new link compendiums to mention as well.  It remains to be seen if they will stand the test of time but here’s hoping that they do.  Mike Powers of Feathers and Flowers has launched Something New [Hatchings] which I take to mean that he might be calling his new feature Hatchings, which sounds nice, though in his inaugural post he leaves open the potential for a name change.  He plans to share “pieces that entertain, teach, inspire, or call to action.” Over at BirdingBlogs.com Gunnar Engblom has launched Birdingblogs Fest which will feature their “favorite birding blogs of the past week.”

And, of course, there are a host of ways one can find bird, birding, and bird blogging news on Facebook and Twitter but that would really take a whole other post and there is no need to write about it here.  Sure, I and the Bird will be sorely missed by many, seeing as it served as an entry into the world of bird blogging for most of the long running bird blogs, but the spirit of I and the Bird lives on in a host of ways and permeates the bird blogosphere.

Written by Corey
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.