A few months back we introduced the crowd-sourced WildObs Wildlife Species Lists which tells you what species have been observed at the park or refuge you are at.

Now, we’ve updated this to group species by category (bird, mammal, etc.) but also to identify which species are new to you (lifers, or just new to your WildObs life list.)

Keep the feedback coming and we’ll keep on making WildObs more powerful.

Here is a a snippet of a sample:

Your Custom Species List

In creating the WildObs wildlife network I’ve been incredibly fortunate to meet some amazing wildlife photographers, birders and nature enthusiasts (here are but a few wonderful wildlife blogs that I follow.)

Creative Commons 'No Entry Sign' from Wikicommons

I’ve noticed a great diversity of solutions for hosting and presenting their work, and sharing it with the networked wildlife community via a website. Social sharing is placing increasing importance on the website and how it integrates into social networks. Some website solutions are better than others, and some seriously limit the ability for naturalist to engage with their audience.

Selecting a website platform to invest in is incredibly hard (especially when ‘technical knowledge’ means cameras or critters not computers) but is also a long term investment, typically committing many years to come. Some of the best naturalists (and I think of all nature lovers who share as naturalists and educators) live in remote locations with limited Internet connectivity and access to website service providers. Making the wrong choice can significantly impact their business.

I’ve been asked to help identify better alternatives, and I want to help gather information that should be considered in making this decision, and provide some pointers on how to solve this problem.

Please help other naturalists by contributing your knowledge in the comments below, or to me directly at wildobs@wildobs.com or @wildobs, and if you can, please complete this short survey:

I commit to collecting all responses and posting the community’s information here. Anybody who participates will be notified of the results.

For Twitter users: Remember how frustrating it was when the fail whale interrupted the conversation? That is what we need to avoid for network naturalist websites.