Characteristics of North American Bird Blogs: Month and Year Initiated
Blogging is a relatively recent phenomenon, and blogging about birds, birding, and birders is an even more recent development. Here are a few notable statistics about the origins of active North American bird blogs (at least 138 known as of this date):
(1) The first bird blog appeared in February 2002, the most recent in November 2006.The following early pioneers of the bird-blog genre are listed in the order in which they were first published (month and year):
(2) Fully 75 percent of current blogs have been in existence only since March 2005.
(3) One-half (50 percent) of the now-active blogs started publishing in the past year (i.e., since November 2006), a growth of 100 percent in one year!
(4) One-quarter (25 percent) of the active blogs have debuted since March 2006.
Are there any other bird-bloggers out their who can trace the origins of their blog to pre-December 2003?Birds Etcetera (February 2002)Bird the Planet (July 2002)Operation Migration - In the Field (November 2002)Swampblog (June 2003)10,000 birds (August 2003)Birdwatch (August 2003)The Urban Pantheist (September 2003)My Birding Journal (November 2003)
Labels: North American bird blogs
posted by John L. Trapp at
12/08/2006 09:20:00 AM
7 Comments:
It's amazing how many of us are still posting considering the mortality rate of blogs.
Your series on North American bird blogs has been excellent.
Here's another new one: http://birdfreak.com/wordpress
Ah yes, the dynamics of bird blogs. Probably not a great deal different than other categories of blogs, but I find the topic interesting. I'm glad you've enjoyed the series, Mike.
Thanks, John. The author of that blog contacted me just yesterday, and I've not yet had a chance to add it to my blogroll. I must say, these new bird-bloggers are setting a very high standard.
I must say I didn't even know what a blog is until I was assigned to write mine when I took my job at Binoculars.com. I'm still trying to figure out how to do it well. You do set a high standard, John.
Thanks you for the kind words, Laura. There are many exceptionally fine bird blogs out there, including yours. I find myself struggling just to keep up with the growing flock.
I started blogging (or at least proto-blogging) about birds back in 2000...back before it was really called blogging. My initial bird blog was to post bird sightings from Hornsby Bend, the best birding spot in Austin, Texas. I was tired of tying up the TEXBIRDS email list with my daily sightings report, so I started up a website where I could write as much as I wanted. This served as something of a local rare bird alert, as well as a way to really talk about local bird distribution without annoying everyone else in Texas who didn't care about Hornsby Bend. Originally I coded these posts in HTML, and eventually started composing them with Netscape Navigator. You can take a look at some of those early proto-blog posts here, here, and here.
I didn't start my first birdblogspot site until January 2004.
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