Join Us on Flickr – at Birdshare!

As we mentioned last week, we’re launching a Cornell Lab of Ornithology photo-sharing group on flickr, appropriately named Birdshare. We encourage you to join and add your bird photos to the pool.

Way back on this blog’s first comments, amid all your helpful suggestions and bird stories, several people mentioned they’d like to see more bird photos on the All About Birds species accounts. Soon, other readers chimed in, offering to contribute photos for such a purpose. This group is a first step in that direction.

The flickr group will be first and foremost a place to share photos – and to discuss identifications, plumages, behavior, artistic merit, anything that strikes you. Think of it as a sort of visual extension of this blog. We’ll link the photo pool to our sidebar so you can see the latest images when you come here.

But we’d like the photos to flow in both directions – out to the flickr world as well as back to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, to augment All About Birds species pages, blog posts, home page articles, and so on. We’ll link to your flickr page and, where possible, credit you as the photographer.

We realize that in doing this, we’re relying on your generosity as photographers and bird watchers, and we’d like to thank you at the outset. The Lab of Ornithology is a nonprofit institution with a big to-do list and a relatively small budget – and we’re mostly scientists, not photographers. If we’re going to teach the world about birds, bird identification, and conservation, we could certainly use your help.

How to join Birdshare

To add photos to the group, you’ll first need a free flickr account.

Then, to join Birdshare, just go here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/birdshare/ and click “Join this group” (or just click here). Agree to the Group Rules, and you’re in!

To add your photos to Birdshare, return to your flickr home page and select the photos you want to add. There are a few ways to add photos, but the most straightforward is “Send to Group” in the row of buttons above the photo you’ve selected.

If you have any questions, just drop us a comment. Thanks!