Hello, Birders.
Some things never change. Soon after I moved to Colorado, 13.5 years ago, somebody asked me to spread the word if I found reliable cedar waxwings. And, just the other day, I got pretty much the exact same request. So here goes: This cloudy Sunday morning, Nov. 1, I found a flock of 32 cedar waxwings at Walden Ponds, Boulder County. (Also at Walden Ponds this morning: wood duck, a seemingly red-eyed Plegadis ibis, Harlan hawk, Virginia rail, greater yellowlegs, eastern bluebird, and swamp sparrow.)
Back to the waxwings. When I arrived in Colorado in the spring of 2002, pretty much the only way to get the word out was via COBirds. But change was in the air. Within a year or so, the groundbreaking Colorado County Birding website was launched. Instead of having to ask for directions to Walden Ponds, you could get that info from Colorado County Birding. You still can; you can get directions, and a whole lot more:
1. http://tinyurl.com/CedW-2015-11-01-CCB
Okay, but what if you want to know the exact location of the waxwing flock? (That's a bit like asking for the exact location of an electron, I suppose.) Well, that brings up another e-resource that was just gaining currency around the time I moved here. Something called Google. In particular, Google Maps. Here's the exact location, right down to the particular tree, of the waxwings this morning:
2. http://tinyurl.com/CedW-2015-11-01-GM
Google has come a long way since 2002. So has eBird. In planning your search for the waxwings, maybe you want to know what else to expect? Here ya go, my eBird checklist for Walden Ponds from this morning:
3. http://tinyurl.com/CedW-2015-11-01-eB1
eBird is so much more than checklists. eBird will very soon be unveiling a major new functionality, an "add media" option. Here's a sneak preview, a photo of a particularly interesting waxwing in this morning's flock:
4. http://tinyurl.com/CedW-2015-11-01-eB2
Maybe you'll want to be on the lookout for that particular bird. Or maybe you just need more general information. Maybe you just want to know what to listen for. eBird can do it. Here's audio, uploaded to eBird, of the flock this morning:
5. http://tinyurl.com/CedW-2015-11-01-eB3
Pretty cool. But maybe you're way into "ear birding," and you want more than the audio and animated spectrogram provided by eBird. No problem. Just bop on over to Xeno-Canto for all the technical specs on these waxwings' vocalizations:
6. http://tinyurl.com/CedW-2015-11-01-XC
Conversely, maybe you don't want all that fancy output and analysis from Xeno-Canto. Totally fine. With SoundCloud, you can just listen:
7. http://tinyurl.com/CedW-2015-11-01-SC
Y'know, my characterization of SoundCloud ("you can just listen") isn't entirely fair. You can "like" recordings, "follow" the recordist, "share" recordings, build your own "playlist," and more. SoundCloud introduces a dimension that simply wasn't there in 2002: online social media. Speaking of online social media, here's how the vocalizations of this morning's waxwings are presented on Twitter:
8. http://tinyurl.com/CedW-2015-11-01-T
Where there's smoke, there's fire. From a consideration of Twitter, we proceed of course to Facebook, and, in particular, to CFO's flourishing and rapidly expanding Facebook presence. Here, on Facebook, are all 32 of this morning's waxwings:
9. http://tinyurl.com/CedW-2015-11-01-FB
All of which might leave you wondering:
10. What's left in it for COBirds? Whither COBirds? Here's my take. I think COBirds serves a valuable role as an aggregator; COBirds is where it all comes together. Xeno-Canto and Facebook and eBird et al. are marvelous, but they generate only a partial record of the total Colorado birding experience. A post to COBirds provides context that those other resources really cannot; COBirds tells the rest of the story; COBirds is, to use a good Boulder word, holistic. If you want facts and data (and that's fine), go to eBird; If you want fancy technical stuff (totally fine), go to Xeno-Canto and such sites; if you want the online social media experience (also fine), join Twitter and Facebook and so forth. But for the fullest immersion in the Colorado birding community online, stick with COBirds. It's still relevant.
Ted Floyd
Lafayette, Boulder County
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