A New San Diego Birding Listserv

A new bird-sighting listserv operated by the San Diego Field Ornithologists has taken over the role formerly held by SDBirds. For a number of years, SDBirds served as the popular go-to site for posting and obtaining information about interesting bird sightings in San Diego County, and was widely recognized for providing an extremely valuable service to San Diego birders. In November, however, SDBirds was officially disbanded, and it no longer operates as a listserv.

The circumstances surrounding the demise of SDBirds underlined the concerns of some in the birding community who had long felt a San Diego birding listserv would be more properly administered by an association of birders, rather than by an individual person. Operation of the new listserv will be fully accountable, with the rules of operation and their implementation subject to the democratic review and approval of the group’s broad and diverse membership. SDFO, as an established organization, will be able to provide for the on-going and uninterrupted succession of management and operation of the new listserv.

The new San Diego birding listserv is called SanDiegoRegionBirding.

Its aim is to provide the most timely and accurate birding information possible to subscribers. The new listserv welcomes current reports of rare and otherwise unusual birds from the field, links to photographs of unusual birds seen locally, migration news, information on population trends, historical records, local pelagic trip reports and schedules, and other information of interest to field birders dealing with the status and distribution of San Diego County birds. The management of the new listserv will be by the annually elected officers and Board of the SDFO, with daily oversight provided by a group made up by some of the Board members and/or their assignees.

An additional benefit of SDFO ownership will be the presence of SanDiegoRegionBirding reports on regional and continent-wide compilation listservs. This will ensure the sharing of birding information from San Diego County with those living elsewhere in California and across the United States.

BVAS supports this new community-based birding listserv, and encourages its members to participate.

To join the new listserv, go to the following website:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SanDiegoRegionBirding