Collins Birds website (1 Viewer)

Does anybody else on here ever use the Collins Birds web site?

It wasn't the greatest interface or site, to be honest, but it had the handy feature of being able to log sightings pretty much anywhere in the world on a google map, which then allowed you to keep track of each and every country list - not just a species list, but an interactive list that allowed the user to look up where each species was seen, when and how many. Also, other users' recent sightings were displayed (although there were not many of these...!)

So, as you might be able to tell, by the fact this is written in the past tense.... it has disappeared. Collinsbirds.com now shows a "register for updates" page, followed by "Collins Birds website now closed" and "Thank you"! I logged on no problem about 2 weeks ago, but today it is gone.

I guess the problem was that the site was under-used, so not viable to keep going. But there was seemingly no warning about it closing, and I personally had all my first sightings of a species for every country logged on there, and many more besides! This amounted to a few thousand sightings in 25 countries...! But now this data is lost :C

Fortunately, I do keep an excel spreadsheet of sightings, too, but I rather liked being able to pinpoint any sightings geographically, and refer back to notes I made on numbers, times, dates, etc.

Anyone any background on the site shutdown? Or any thoughts how I might be able to get my data back?!

I must admit I was very disappointed in the site. There appeared to be no-one moderating the forum, and worse, no-one checking the IDs - even some of the pictures in their database were incorrectly identified.

I also found their ranges rather odd... all the birds found in the Americas were listed as being seen in Mexico and similarly all European birds were found in Belgium (with few other areas listed at all for either!

A shame really - as you say, it had some useful features, but if no-one their end was taking any interest in keeping it right and interacting with the members, it was bound to die a death.

It's true, the site had many shortcomings, and there was little or no effort made to improve it.

Are there other web-based options that you are aware of? I use Birdtrack, but that only allows sightings in the UK, and an advantage Collins Birds had was that sightings could be registered anywhere.

Or even similar map-based software for tracking sightings, as maybe I should keep sightings on my own computer rather than trust a web-site to keep the data (having already lost all the sightings I had logged on a (much better) app on facebook that also disappeared overnight a couple of years ago!

I only use BirdTrack as I don't really bird anywhere else than the UK. They're sharing their database with e-bird I understand, which is becoming a global recording site I think.

There's probably others though.

I personally use Ebird which can much of what you describe, including reporting what you have seen in each country.

I also use a non-web based program for similar items, in part because I had started long before ebird became worldwide. The good thing about ebird is that it also is a citizens science project, there is a hope that your data will be used by others.

Niels

Thanks... have registered with e-bird and looks pretty useful. It appears to also link up with Birdtrack, but not sure if it's possible to get sightings on Birdtrack register on e-bird. But at least for other countries, I can enter sightings now...

I wonder how long it will take me to back-date all my country lists....? :eek!: