HI Folks,
Many in the Oregon birding community are moving to use the Discord app
for sharing bird sightings and communicating about birds in Oregon at the
state, regional, and county level, and for related topics of interest. The
Discord app can be used on your phone or computer (Discord.com).
Here in Douglas County we have gone from using Yahoo email group list to
Freelists email group list, and a few years ago kind of added on the Umpqua
Basin Naturalists facebook group (with the purpose of including more taxa
than birds). A little over a year ago I followed the statewide trend at
that time and created a WhatsApp group for Douglas County birds.
Activity on any of these outlets comes and goes with our relatively small
population, but I'm trying to stay modern, so-to-speak, haha. So, I am
already using the Discord app, and enjoying it. Essentially, once you join,
you can access the entire suite of "channels" for all areas and bird topics
for the state, pick the ones you want to see, pick the ones you want to be
notified about, and go from there. The following is an invite link to join
the statewide Discord "server" called *Oregon Birding*. If you don't have
Discord on your phone or computer, you will want to download and install
that first (Discord.com). Once you
Join the Oregon Birding discord group by clicking here:
https://discord.gg/y9hyNjqMpN
Once you join, I would recommend immediately finding the discord-how-to
channel. In there are videos on some basics of discord.
Then, you will want to customize the channels you see and get notifications
for. One of the leaders of this effort, Kyle Landstra, will be giving an
intro and question/answer session this Thursday (April 18), 6-7:30 pm. You
can join this online meeting by clicking on this link at the beginning of
the meeting time:
https://meet.google.com/yxw-zhkn-fzf
I encourage you all to sign up if you are interested. I will be closing the
WhatsApp group by the end of April. I will keep this freelists email list
going for now, but may reassess its usefulness at some point in the future.
See you on the Oregon Birding discord server.
If you have any basic questions, feel free to ask. I'm fairly new at it
myself, but might be able to help beginners. :-) Once you're in the Oregon
Birding discord server, there is a support channel where you can ask
questions as well.
All the Best,
Matt Hunter
owner/admin
Umpqua Birds
Umpquabirds.org
mghwildlife.com
