I created County Birder after e-Bird led my good birding buddy and me to get much more actively involved in county birding. I had always thought the keeping county lists was just something that “listers” did to fulfill their OCD tendencies while birding. With the explosion of e-Bird use, keeping county lists became just a natural outcome of reporting sightings. With the addition of the “Top-100” feature, friendly competition added to the incentive.
Subscribing to alerts for your county, state and the ABA area work pretty well to be alerted about unusual sightings, and the “needs” alerts are fun too. I created the County Rare Birds pages to enable birders to look back over a couple of weeks at the uncommon birds seen in any county of interest. This can be helpful when traveling, planning a trip out of your local county, trying to “build a list” in a given area, or to look back more than a couple of days in your own county.
Blogging has become so common as a way to journal your sightings that I wanted to make a community of birders who can chronicle their birding experiences in a place they can share with others with a shared interest. It can also be a way to reminisce and make notes to yourself to review prior to returning to a site. You can put directions, notes to self, reminders, or anything else you like in a format that makes looking back simple and makes filing unnecessary.
I plan to use my blog as a place to write notes-to-self, and anyone else interested, about places I’ve been and things I’ve experienced. Hopefully you’ll find this fun and useful too.