Western, Snowy Owls To End of Nov. 2011

eBird map of reported Snowy Owls to end of November 2011
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And here are some links to Flickr photos round and about:
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/normng/6476044075/in/pool-39777562@N00/



http://www.flickr.com/photos/normng/6476044671/

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And from this flickr page, you can follow a link to a TV news piece from Washington State.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tony-v/sets/72157628327622457/
I really must go for a drive and look around! I have only ever seen them twice - once at Boundart Bay, off in the distance, where it was sitting on a piece of driftwood; and once at Ta Ta Creek - the one Dean and Valerie spotted and kindly reported a couple of years ago. They are beautiful birds, are they not!
Dianne C.

More than just social networking - BC birding groups on the net

BC bird groups on the net

Here is a list of internet groups devoted to birds in BC.

If your birding interests include help in identification, a bit of regional and / or seasonal listing, a bit of zoogeography, a bit of photography, etc. I recommend you join the appropriate group.

There is still a place for these groups within the realm of internet resources.

Facebook and twitter are great for keeping in touch with the actual people doing the birding, and for being alerted to recent sightings BUT as an archive, these fall short for searchability.

eBird is great for seeing the actual data, if people have entered it, but it is still far under-used and does not put you in touch with the actual observers, also, vetting of confirmation of sightings is not public, and photos are not shared.

These groups, the people contributing to them, and the discussions, data and photos archived in them are invaluable, extremely helpful, and fun to read.

British Columbia Interior bird and nature photos - Google group
http://groups.google.com/group/bcintbird-pics?hl=en

British Columbia Interior - Yahoo group
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/bcintbird/

British Columbia - all -Yahoo group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bcbirds/

East Kootenay - Yahoo group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ekootenaybirds/

West Kootenay - Yahoo group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wkbirds/

Vancouver Island - Yahoo group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bcbirdingvanisland/

One beauty of these groups, as opposed to facebook and other social network communication, is that their archives are searchable, and go back many recent years. If you were to attempt a search with a major search engine to try to find out, for example, at what time of year and where exactly have snowy owls been seen in BC the best you may come up with, of data contained in these groups, is a reference on the website "birdingonthenet" which gathers all references from all these lesser sites; whereas, if you go to these groups' webpages you can search their archives directly.

I think, of all the things humans are interested in, that birding, in all its dimensions from backyarders to conservationists, through to listers, benefits the most from the internet and its myriad vehicles and resources: groups, blogs, photosharing, mapping, online databases, fan pages, social networks, and so on.

My two bits

Dianne C.

Red-tailed Hawk "digi"-scoped, haha

Here is my first ever digiscoping effort. Picked something large that would sit still for awhile. Taken with Sony cyberpshot and Nikon scope. Pretty funny.


Red-tailed hawk. It sat still for a while then hopped down to the right, picked something out of the grass and returned to the pole.



Then the guts started flying and in 25 seconds, with two rips and gulps, whatever it was, was now hawk energy.

Flipboard screenshot of one of my twitter searches

From Blogger Pictures

Well, it got cropped, I think but ...

I'm liking this "Flipboard" app for mobile tablet, especially for quick browsing of my facebook, twitter, flickr, and google reader pages.

Not only can you see your main page / timeline / photostream / list, but you can access most of the other features of the social media, and in one case, it's better than the original!

Say you marked that you liked a facebook page, never to hear from it again because its posts are not included on your wall. As far as I can tell, your list of pages is buried in a long paragraph format by following the command line Profile > Info > More Pages. Too onerous!

On flipboard, it's included in the list of the drop down menu right in front of your face top centre!

Plus! On twitter, if you have already set up some saved searches, voila! There they are! Same place, top centre dropdown menu.

The flipboard presentation format on a tablet is pretty attractive and fun to browse. So neat.