While I’m here in Seattle for a few days to represent Wingscapes at the Wild Birds Unlimited Vendor Mart 2009, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share a little “blog love.”
First off, speaking of Wingscapes, one of the birding blog communities most active members, Connie from Birds O’ the Morning (and WildBird magazine’s reigning Birder of the Year) recently used a Wingscapes BirdCam to record some superb images of a nesting American Kestrel, which she then uploaded to the Wingscapes BirdCam Photo Gallery for all to enjoy.
Thinking of WildBird‘s Birder of the Year competition brings to mind Swarovski, a principle prize sponsor of that annual event. Not only did Connie receive a fine Swarovski binocular as part of her prize package, she also received a five day, all expenses paid trip to Costa Rica with WildBird Editor-in-Chief Amy Hooper and Swarovski’s digiscoping master Clay Taylor. Clay, who also happens to be attending the Seattle WBU Vendor Mart, has a new blog in the making – Clay’s Digiscoping 1000. The project around which this new blog is based, Clay’s quest to digiscope 1,000 bird and other wildlife species, is jointly sponsored by Swarovski and Bird Watcher’s Digest. While “CD1000” is still in its early stage, I’d recommend subscribing to the RSS feed now as once it really gets going some astonishing images are certain to be posted to it.
Speaking of Bird Watcher’s Digest, have you visited Bill Thompson’s “new and improved” Bill of the Birds blog yet? The new layout is both visually superb as well as making the information Bill presents much more easily accessible; information such as how to subscribe to his always-entertaining This Birding Life podcast – the most recent edition of which features an enlightening interview with Mitch Waite, the innovative genius behind the extraordinary iBird Explorer applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as the WhatBird interactive website. (If you haven’t downloaded the free WhatBird toolbar to your web browser yet, you really should; it makes referencing detailed information about North American birds astonishingly quick and easy.)
Finally, speaking of podcasts, the good people at Podcats who bring the world the enchanting, RSPB sponsored Nature’s Voice podcast were recently honored with the Bronze medal in the Internet Programme category of the Sony Academy Radio Awards. The judges citation reads, “An outstanding production: entertaining, richly informative and professionally crafted. It made great use of the internet to reach a specialist interest group, while remaining accessible to a far wider audience.” As a long-time listener to Nature’s Voice, I can well attest to every word of this and offer Podcats a hearty “well done indeed!”
