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Travellingbirder....?? (1 Viewer)

I tried sending an email to Christian Svane on the three emails I had for him but at least one was returned undelivered (maybe all as they all were either @ travellingbirder or eurobirding).

Hopefully it is not completely lost and this is a temporary glitch, but even if Christian & co (bro) can no longer keep it up for what ever reason then maybe something else can be done to salvage the resource?

Whatever the outcome the website was a fantastic database and one for which Ive been very grateful to for the last few years. So thank you if you are reading this :t:.

At present all is not completely lost, as the web is cached, and with a bit of inventive searching (and a lot of extra effort!) some trip reports in pdf can still be accessed via google 'quick view'* and others not pdf can be viewed in google 'cached' - for how long I dont know.

Try googling the following:

"site:travellingbirder.com" XXXX

with XXXX being the search parameters you are interested in. eg for trip reports to Kazakhstan:

http://www.google.co.uk/#sclient=ps...gc.r_pw.&fp=3d8c1ef1a7c12238&biw=1366&bih=656



*to access Google quick view you need a google account, which is free.
 
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This is a bloody disaster for the, decreasing in number, birders who still travel independently. It was far and away the best site. Anyone got suggestions for the second best site?
 
birdboybowley said:
Aargh - tell me about it! I'm still permanently amazed how some tour trips run...people must have more money than sense...
Click to expand...

Speaking personally, I have relatively shallow pockets (or short arms, depending upon who you speak to...) but am definitely time-poor. I much prefer the independent option, but am increasingly finding myself drawn towards tours eg next year I'm likely to be able to manage a 7-10 day birding trip, which was to be to Turkey, but my potential travelling companions have different targets/available dates/"comfort" requirements, I'm not 100% sure they're all that keen, and I'm also not sure I've got the time to devote to planning anyway! Self-guided would be cheaper and more fun, but I could afford a tour at a pinch, so what to do......

As regards travellingbirder, there's a lot of trip reports here on BirdForum, and maybe if people could salvage info via Google as detailed above, and post here, some kind admin soul could beef up the forum to make it more user-friendly?? With more reports it could be divided into regions rather than simply a searchable list, for example.
 
I had a quick look at birding site guide and there was one entry for Czech Rep which I read and which I thought would be extremely misleading for someone planning a trip. E.g. it mentioned Scops owls which (and I make no claim at all to be an authority on Cz birds) I have only heard of calling in the breeding season near Prerov - on the other side of the Czech Rep! Red footed falcons? I don't know where the writer got his info from but it wasn't the reports I read. I like the birdforum and surfbirder trip reports and the bird tour company reports often give big clues as to good areas and sometimes identify their guides who can be contacted and asked for a day/evening session to find the really difficult owl or woodpecker deep in the forest. Lastly, just reading the contributions in birdforum leads me to suspect that a quiet pm to the right person would get you the inside track on lots of places.
den
 
Does anyone know why it might not come back up? If it's a cost issue, I'd happily put my hand in my pocket, since I've certainly benefited from an excellent resource. And, for that matter, I'd be prepared to help run it with others, if admin time was the problem.

The site really was superb, far better than anything else I'd seen. Obviously some reports are better than others (noting Den's point above), but I've found a number of exceptionally useful reports there.
 
Incredible, all these reports gone???
Is there a way that the owners of travellingbirder give the repots to a new site? How can I plan a trip without travellingbirder????
The reports must still be somewhere?
Hmm, questions only....
 
Travellingbirder

sanderbot said:
Incredible, all these reports gone???
Is there a way that the owners of travellingbirder give the repots to a new site? How can I plan a trip without travellingbirder????
The reports must still be somewhere?
Hmm, questions only....
Click to expand...

Very sad news indeed.
I hope that Urik reconsiders.
Mick
:C
 
sanderbot said:
Incredible, all these reports gone???
Is there a way that the owners of travellingbirder give the repots to a new site? How can I plan a trip without travellingbirder????
The reports must still be somewhere?
Click to expand...

Presumably a lot/some of the reports are out there on the author's own personal websites or stached away on their harddrive ... but getting hold of them would probably prove tricky or impossible?

There will also be a number of reports that people have downloaded for their own use and still have on their computer - for example I downloaded and saved a number for Turkey, Morocco etc from the last few years (I can't be the only one never to delete potentially useful stuff from my computer?!). I suggest that if persons are planning a trip they make a request here on BF, asking if anyone has any info they can share. Or maybe a dedicated thread on the subject could be set up (eg in the 'Information Wanted' section).

Not sure if BF (as mentioned earlier) is the best place to host a 'new' Travelling Birder' type resource (holding files, pdfs, word docs - not sure this has happened thus far, and the format would be different), but I'm sure it could fit in the general remit of 'Birdforum' (either linked to opus or not), and could potentially be a great resource, if run along the lines of travelling birder.



Otherwise, resources I can recall are 'Fatbirder', the Go-south website for Morocco, possibly the Oriental Bird Club? (some reports came up on google searches, which when highlighted came up as text (otherwise they were white text on a white background!)), and various personal websites (Rich Bonser and Jos Stratford's) being the two I have come across. Mostly European of course.
 
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Hi,

Very worrying indeed, really hope it comes back.

Meanwhile, Swedish Club300 has a fairly large database of trip reports now (about 760 reports from 110 countries). In the last week several new reports from Polynesia and Micronesia have been added.

It can be found at:
http://www.club300.se/Travel/

The site is in Swedish but most of the reports are in English. Just click on the map to get to the right part of the world.

Anyone wanting to upload trip reports are very welcome to send them to
[email protected]

Cheers
Markus Lagerqvist
Club300
 
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dantheman said:
Not sure if BF (as mentioned earlier) is the best place to host a 'new' Travelling Birder' type resource (holding files, pdfs, word docs - not sure this has happened thus far, and the format would be different), but I'm sure it could fit in the general remit of 'Birdforum' (either linked to opus or not), and could potentially be a great resource, if run along the lines of travelling birder.
Click to expand...
Worth running past the the admin staff I'd say. It would make this site even better than it already is.
 
We can create a forum and give it the respective sub forums for destination, but uploading/cut and pasting would have to be done by anyone who has the time.
 
Granny sucking eggs maybe but didn't travellingbirder just work on the basis of linking various reports hosted at numerous sites? No need for the cutting and pasting, just very extensive and continuous searching.
 
But it wasn't only the trip reports, it was the way they were organised by minth with the accompanying table so you could easily see what was the best month to visit a country...little things like that
 
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