Welcome to the Cuckmere-Ouse Bird Blog

The area that stretches from Newhaven to Cuckmere Haven in the south up to Arlington and Lewes in the north is one of the richest and most diverse areas for wildlife in Sussex.

So high time it had its own blog!

Chief sources of inspiration are RXWildlife, a great local wildlife blog, and the Sussex Ornithological Society website, an essential source of bird news from around the county.

The Cuckmere-Ouse Bird Blog (COBB) aims to provide an accessible, attractive home for local birders, wildlife enthusiasts and visitors to the area; somewhere to share reports, pictures and thoughts.

And – hopefully – it will also provide the focal point for a little experiment in how birding might harness social media.

With the advent of micro-blogging, it’s now cheap and easy to get short messages from anywhere, at any time. At the moment, most bird alert services gather information in a central place and push it out. But it doesn’t have to be like that anymore.

Just as micro-blogging (Twitter, friendfeed) has enabled people to develop and manage their own social networks online, so ‘micro-birding’ (will that stick?) could do the same.

Local birders can form a network that keeps itself up to date with what’s going on, bypassing the need for a central organiser.

Which means getting news fast. Say a Honey Buzzard is drifting over your house. With one quick text message from your phone, you could make sure that everyone in your network knows about it – instantly – so increasing the chance that others will see it too.

The details of how this might work are still up for grabs. But if you’re interested in helping me work it out, or simply want to show your interest, contact me at cpeverett@googlemail.com.

Cheers

Charlie
(Firle birds)