{"id":569,"date":"2013-05-29T15:59:53","date_gmt":"2013-05-29T19:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/?p=569"},"modified":"2013-05-29T16:00:47","modified_gmt":"2013-05-29T20:00:47","slug":"birdfellow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/2013\/05\/29\/birdfellow\/","title":{"rendered":"BirdFellow"},"content":{"rendered":"

I want to alert you to a new on-line resource for birders called BirdFellow (www.birdfellow.com<\/a>).\u00a0 It is a crowd-sourced mine of information on North American birds.\u00a0 It shares some features with Wikipedia and with Facebook in encouraging communal sharing of information.<\/p>\n

\"Brewer's_Sparrow\"<\/a>When you visit the site, you first see a glorious panorama of a mountain lake.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very inviting entry site.\u00a0 From the homepage, you can take a useful video tour of the site.\u00a0 It\u2019s an easy site to navigate so you can jump right in and explore if you prefer to skip the video.<\/p>\n

I started by visiting the Social Field Guide.\u00a0 I decided to begin by investigating the coverage of Brewer\u2019s Sparrow, a western sparrow whose distinguishing characteristic is the lack of distinguishing characteristics!\u00a0 Many Brewer\u2019s Sparrows are dismissed as Little Brown Jobs.\u00a0 I typed in Brewer\u2019s Sparrow, hit Enter and was presented with an absolutely gorgeous photo of a Brewer\u2019s Sparrow.<\/p>\n

I clicked on the Identification Photos and had access to another 20, equally stunning photographs.\u00a0 Other links allow you to upload your own photos to the site, part of the crowd-sourcing nature of BirdFellow.<\/p>\n

Like all species pages, the Brewer\u2019s Sparrow page has text fields below the photograph window.\u00a0 An identification section describes the field marks of females and males.\u00a0 The author of this account agrees with my take on Brewer\u2019s Sparrow by writing, \u201cSometimes the best field mark is no field mark.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Length and Wingspan are provided along with sections on Habitat , Behavior, and Feeding.\u00a0 A Voice section gives a brief description of the songs and calls and a Listen button allows you to hear high-quality recordings of those sounds.<\/p>\n

At the bottom of the account, several links are provided.\u00a0 Field Notes allows you to enter your own notes.\u00a0 The Expanded Life History link takes you to a number of categories (e.g., Nesting Habits, Relationships to Humans) where you can contribute content to the site.\u00a0 You can post your sightings via another link.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve barely scratched the surface on this promising resource.\u00a0 Once you become a member (free), you can join various discussion groups or create your own.\u00a0 Give it a try.\u00a0 At the very least, you will have the pleasure of enjoying a wealth of photographs of these winged animals we love.<\/p>\n

[Originally published on March 3, 2013]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to alert you to a new on-line resource for birders called BirdFellow (www.birdfellow.com).\u00a0 It is a crowd-sourced mine of information on North American birds.\u00a0 It shares some features with Wikipedia and with Facebook in encouraging communal sharing of information. When you visit the site, you first see a glorious panorama of a mountain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":572,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions\/572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}