How Blogging is Helping Me Be a Better Birder

I've been blogging about birds for almost two years now and I've been reading other bird blogs for about the same amount of time.  I have started to notice that blogging has helped me become a better birder in several ways.  This includes Twittering in the online birding community too, which I have only been doing for a couple of months now.  I didn't even realize that while I was entertaining myself, I was also building up a mental bird library.

The journaling aspect of blogging helps me retain what I have learned and experienced.  Blogging has pushed me to go birding more often and to go places that I probably would not have otherwise done.

Getting responses and comments from readers and participation from other birders, especially related to my Idaho Birder Profile segments, continually invigorates my desire to go birding.  I have learned a ton by the birder profiles about where to go birding in Idaho, and I've picked up a few tips about birding style too.

The biggest source of my birding skills improving has to be in simply following other birding blogs.  I see photos of birds perhaps not common to my area, but by browsing blogs and Twitter daily, I see birds photographed frequently enough they are becoming familiar.  I start recognizing many species without even having to read the text.  The pictures and the text generally convey the habitat too.  I suppose it is a little like arm-chair on-screen birding.  Thank you all you bird bloggers out there!

So, if you want to be a better and more enthusiastic birder, check out all the blogs in my sidebar as often as possible and keep coming back to the Idaho Birding Blog!