Birding Blogs

Wonderful Web Logs

Birding Blogs – Blogs, from the words ‘web log’, are simply personal online birding diaries. Strictly speaking – so the purists will tell you – they should follow a definite formula: latest entries should be always be at the top of the homepage with older entries (or ‘posts’) below them; they should include ‘permalinks’ and readers should be able to add ‘comments’; they should be written on ‘blogging software’ and hosted – often for free – by blog companies like Blogger or Blogspot; and they should never be referred to as ‘websites’.

Like anything else though, blogs are evolving and these strictures are being broken down. Arranging posts chronologically will always be with us, but whilst using blog software certainly takes all the difficulties out of learning the coding ‘languages’ that websites are written in, some birders, especially photographers, find the narrow columns a little restrictive and prefer to build their own (or more likely use one of WordPress’s thousands of templates). In many cases what differentiates a birding ‘website’ from a birding ‘blog’ is difficult to see – but as long as it’s interesting and it’s a good read, does it really matter?

Why do ‘bloggers’ keep blogs? The world-wide blog community (the ‘blogosphere’) is generally friendly and welcoming: it’s a fun place to hang around in. Keeping a blog is really no more difficult than keeping a notebook – but it’s a great deal easier to share your thoughts and your sightings with your mates when they can read what you have to say in the comfort of their own home. Does that make them worth reading? Sure, some blogs lead to dead ends or are infrequently updated, but some of them are funny, irreverent, well-informed, well-written, or lavishly illustrated. Try a few out from the list below – you never know what you might find…

Birding BLOGS are no different from other web logs – some people are inveterate diary keepers and others start the year with great enthusiasm and then fade away… some are kept up year on year, others are still live but not updated for years!

[I recently revised this page removing BLOG links that are best seen on the appropriate country, state or county page. So I now have listed below BLOGs that did not neatly fit a geographical or other Fatbirder page – see all of them for many, many more blogs… please let me know of any others that deserve a place here… Fatbirder]