Hi,
Since June this year I have been posting bird observations in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) on
Twitter from my cell phone. For some examples see
Twitter Search or
Google Search Updates.
I'm starting this thread to invite other birders to join me in this activiy and to propose that interested birders agree on some common grounds for sharing observations in these Twitter based reports.
First, let me say that I think it would be really useful if active birders in the GTA posted highlight sightings while birding, as opposed to only reporting after the fact, generally in the evening after coming home from an excursion. "Real-time" reports would certainly improve the chances for other birders to see the birds reported.
Now, to be clear I'm imagining a Twitter report network here in the GTA as a complement to the existing bird report systems, i.e. our own list here, ONTBIRDS and Ebird, not as a replacement. While Twitter has some neat advantages it also has limitations. A Twitter message can only contain 140 characters, so reports will have to be brief, and thus Twitter messages lend themselves best to reports of observations that are a bit out of the ordinary, the highlights of your birding day for example. A full report should probably also be filed to the appropriate forum or mailing list.
Many birders already receive ONTBIRDS emails to their smart phones (e.g. iPhone, Android, or Blackberry) in real-time. However, ONTBIRDS has restrictions for what can be reported and the list covers a huge area, all of Ontario. What I am proposing is a report network that focuses on the GTA area, just as our report forum here does. So it would have a more local flavour, which could include reports of birds that are perhaps not rare in a provincial perspective but certainly are interesting to us local birders.
Also, many birders don't have smart phones, so reading and posting on ONTBIRDS while out in the field is not a possibility for everyone. Twitter messages on the other hand can be sent from a standard cell phone that is able to send and receive text (SMS) messages (this is a very basic functionality available on most cell phones). I'd be happy to provide a description on how to set up your phone and twitter account.
For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter I suggest to have a look at this
introduction. A thorough description is available on
wikipedia.
The design of the GTA based Twitter network I have envisioned is quite simple. As most birders probably don't care to receive messages about any non-bird related messages that other participants may tweet, we want to avoid having all participants following each other.
Instead the report system should use hashtags. Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr or on a Blog, only added inline to your Twitter message. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.
As you can see I have "tagged" all my bird observation tweets with the hashtag #GTAbirds. All you need to do to participate is to tag your tweeted bird reports with the #GTAbirds tag. This will make it available to anyone who chooses to follow (or search for) that particular tag.
As you can see this system is very simple, requires no administration, is free (except for standard cell phone fees), is easy to get started with, or stop using. In fact anyone who feels like it can join today, simply by posting reports tagged #GTAbirds.
Suggestions and feedback on these ideas are welcome.
And please feel free to join me in reporting birds at #GTAbirds next time you are out birding in the GTA!
Andreas
