Now that the new Idahobirds site is live I want to point out a feature I
think has tremendous potential for expansion. Kas Dumroese has made the
old Idaho Birder’s Guide available on the site. Thanks Kas. This was my
Bible when I started birding and I visited many of the sites it
includes. I found it indispensable when traveling to other parts of the
state. So if you aren’t familiar with it take a few minutes to look it over.

A Birder’s Guide To Idaho

The site also includes a section for the Idaho Birding Trail.
https://fishandgame.idaho.gov/ifwis/ibt/pub.aspx?id=guide
The sites don’t have as much detail as the Birder’s Guide and there is
some overlap but there many sites not covered in other resources.
Definitely worth a look.

That said I started birding Island Park Reservoir years ago and had to
figure out how to access the best locations, etc. Over the years people
would occasionally want to go out there and I finally decide to put a
map together. I fine tuned it and added it to the new web site.

Island Park Reservoir

It was kind of thrown together quickly so I invite you to look it over
and offer any suggestions for improvement. I feel it’s one of the most
overlooked hotspots in the state and has produced many rarities over the
years despite Lisa and I being about the only people who bird it, and
not nearly often enough at that. Hopefully this will generate a bit more
coverage. I have a couple more little spots in mind for a page of their
own and I’ll get to them as time permits.

With that in mind I will also invite you to think about your own local
patch and whether you think it would be beneficial for others to know
how and hen to bird there. If you’d like to put together a write up for
your favorite place(s) we can make a map and post a site description for
all to enjoy.

Another thing that would be useful is any significant changes to habitat
or access or newly discovered birding opportunities at locations already
covered by Birder’s Guide and Idaho Birding Trail. Examples off the top
of my head would include discovery of Camas NWR and Market Lake WMA as
amazing vagrant traps during migration. Fires burning off forest or
brush. Road closures. You get the idea. Rather than arrive and discover
you can’t get there or there are no trees it would be great if these
changes were mad available on Idahobirds. Obviously these could be very
brief descriptions of relevant changes so if you know of changes to any
of the locations please take a minute to document them for everyone’s
benefit. Any other suggestions are welcome.

Hope everyone is enjoying the site as much as I am. My thanks to all who
contributed (I’m not really one of them). I know it was a ton of work
and I appreciate the effort.

Cliff

—
Cliff and Lisa Weisse
Island Park, Idaho
cliffandlisa@octobersetters.com

Wendy — thanks again for a wonderful post. I feel like I am up there
with you. I just got back from a long weekend trip down to Castle Rocks
and City of Rocks parks. Best bird for me was a lifer Gray Flycatcher.
Also being part of documenting their first confirmed sighting of a
Common Yellowthroat

Scott Tuthill

Thanks very much Lisa, Cliff, Darren, Shirley, Charles & everyone else for working on this!!!

Jay

> On Jun 2, 2017, at 10:19 PM, Cliff and Lisa cliffandlisa@octobersetters.com [ible] wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> The new IdahoBirds.net web site is live. It takes a while for all the servers on the Internet to point to the right place, so some people might still get the old site. If that happens just wait. It will eventually switch for you.
> Here are a few things we want everyone to know.
>
> The photos you contributed are on the Species Latilong pages within the Distribution section. I was super impressed with how many people put their time into finding the images we needed, and also with the quality. We have a good group of bird photographers in Idaho! In some cases there were multiple great photos to choose from, and which ones got posted depended on things like better photo, taken in Idaho, interesting, or spreading it out among the photographers. Darren Clark has photos of more than half of the species, so we initially started there to get as many filled in as possible. That makes him a bit over-represented though:-) We don’t intend these to be static, and it would be nice to see them rotated. Lets leave them for a while to give people a chance to see all of them, and then we’ll gradually start rotating. I highly recommend clicking on the images to see larger versions. Some are simply the best any Idaho birder could find or documentary photos of rare birds in the state, but a lot of them a really good and worth taking a closer look at.
>
> We have plans to expand the site, especially in the Destinations area. Will post more on that later.
> Darren made new versions of the latilong maps. He is working with Shirley Sturts to get them updated and current with the records, but it will be a few weeks before that is complete. People can submit new latilong changes now, but it may be better to wait until Darren is done and he lets everyone know.
>
> IBLE posts to the new site. We have not been able to do that (so far) with Inland-NW but Charles Swift is working on it. In the mean time, emails that are sent to IBLE will post, so if you are a member of both you can cc to IBLE and it will appear on the web site.
> Please let me know if you see anything that doesn’t seem to work right- bad links, typos, missing records, etc. One minor thing you can ignore is the little caution sign by the url about the site not being completely secure on some pages. That’s coming from the BirdTrax gadget that shows eBird sightings. Not to worry- just don’t enter your credit card or anything:-)
> Lisa
> –
> Cliff and Lisa Weisse
> Island Park, Idaho
> cliffandlisa@octobersetters.com
>