Sunday 15 March 2009

Twitter

A female Mallard, South Norwood Country Park, south London or is it Croydon?
Over the last couple of days I was gently eased into the world of 'Twitter'. Initially, I was told about it by the woman who guided my birth into the blogging ether, Clare Evans (check her blog, she's one of my followers). After a long gestation period of deliberation I was finally induced by Fiona Barclay at Birdguides - who's quickly becoming my own private IT support.

I'm now a partially fledged Twitterer. To be honest, the jury is still out. I don't really see the point of it at the moment. I mean, do people, strangers at that, really want to know that I've just had sex, been to the loo or in the midst of contemplative navel gazing? I think not!

Needless to say, I shall persevere with it for a little while to see how I feel a little further down the line.

Today, I enjoyed some of the ornithological delights of Croydon in south London (or is it Surrey?) as research for my forthcoming piece in Bird Watching magazine. I loved discovering a drumming and calling Lesser Spotted Woodpecker in Selsdon Wood, a soaring Peregrine over Riddlesdown and an array of commoner species in South Norwood Country Park including at least 7 nervous Fieldfares. I love Fieldfares. In Spain they call them Royal Thrushes. They should be renamed Royal Thrush - as I feel that there is something definitely regal about them. Well, having said that, they look pretty manky on their breeding grounds and have a crap song!

I best get on with my article - the deadline was last Tuesday!

3 comments:

Gunnar Engblom said...

Hi David

As mentioned I did a "Twitter for birders, part 1" (http://bit.ly/PcWAY) and it has been advanced to "Twitter for birders, part 2" http://bit.ly/X7QG), in which it is explained how twitter can basically become a rare bird alert service - for free!
Since I wrote that second manual, I noticed that there already is an incipiant such service in Britain.
It is quite possible to set up a similar RBA for London.
Saludos

Gunnar Engblom, Lima, Peru

The Urban Birder said...

That's interesting Gunnar,

But I won't be the one to set it up in London!

Clare Evans said...

Right - I'll have to search you down on Twitter David. :)

You could set up a Twitter feed - http://www.twitterfeed.com and then automatically tweet your latest blog updates. I'm tweeting from @naturenotes as well as my work blogs.

It's not just about "What I'm I doing" right now and no, people don't want to necessarily know all about the latest navel gaze or loo visit!