Nature Blog Network

If it’s Monday, it’s time to meet another Nature Blog Network member. Today, I’d like you to meet Bevson, who blogs at Behind the Bins .
Bevson lives on a mountain in New Jersey, where she shares her house with four cats and her yard with a variable number of transient black bears. She has been birding almost 20 years and for the past 12 has travelled often for work, birding where ever she went. This has given her a life list with more than 600 species as well as a fine collection of music from her travels.

Bevson tries to get outside and in the field most weekends. As she says, “The outdoors feeds my blog and in turn the blog feeds my need to be outdoors. It’s all good.” We all can relate to that! Here’s more from and about her and Behind the Bins.

Why do you blog?

My very first blog post was about finding a tagged Trumpeter Swan. I had been a lurker for years, and something about that experience pushed me over the edge.

Then in April this year, I started to blog for work. Since it was a team blog and I was the leader, I felt I needed to understand WordPress, which was the platform we were using; so I started Behind the Bins. Yes, I have two blogs. Crazy, I know. I was interested in trying a topic-specific blog and doing a compare and contrast between the traffic, comments, quality of networking, and other characteristics of the two blogs.

I haven’t quite correlated the differences between the two blogs yet, but as an off-the-cuff thought,  I would say that the birding one gets more traffic because it is topic specific while I get loads more Google hits on the generic one since it is wide-ranging.

What’s the best thing about blogging?

Hands down, it’s the community, including the sharing and the peeking into other people’s lives and points of view. It is also a way of honing my writing skills and sharing my photos. I discovered that most people come to both of the blogs for the photos or at least most of the comments are about the pictures. I could blather on and no one cares, but put up a picture and there is a much different response. We live in a very visual society.  People just do not read if they do not have to.  Photos are totally key.

How did you pick the name of your blog?

What is the one thing about birding that is the most necessary to the enjoyment of our hobby? Binoculars! Without some sort of optical equipment we would not be able to do what we do. So my blog is about me and what I see, from behind the bins. Nonetheless, I like the name of my other blog, murmuring trees, better.

What’s unique or different about your blog?

We each bring to blogging our own unique perspective–how we see the world differs. Some of my blog content is from my birding on business. I have the privilege of being able to travel for my work. As a result, I can see birds around different parts of the country.

What other social networking tools do you use?

Twitter. I love Twitter. I have six-some Twitter accounts and tweet both for work and for pleasure. It is odd that so few birders use twitter. I haven’t figured out why.

StumbleUpon is wonderful too. I have seen a huge up-tick in my traffic since being on StumbleUpon. I also love the carnivals and memes that are floating around—now if I could just remember the deadlines. I also have a Flickr account, but I haven’t posted anything on it for about a year.

I belong to various blogging networks, like BlogCatalog and BlogHer, and use them for networking. I gave up and deleted my Facebook, Eons, Classmates, and similar accounts as I found them repetitive to the blogging. I remain on Ancestry, LinkedIn and FriendFeed. Long-lost friends and cousins six-times removed have found me by Googling “bevson.”

What’s the payoff for the time it takes to use all this new technology?

It can be overwhelming. I always feel like I am behind, especially since I am social networking for both work and pleasure. In addition to increasing the time I spend writing, the payoff is the networking. I have met (virtually, of course) some terrific people and also the feedback-the comments, shout-outs, and link-backs are encouraging.

Any comments on being part of the nature blogger community?

I mostly bird alone, so it is nice to have an outlet for sharing the joys and sorrows of birding and my sightings, and to be part of a community that understands my passion.

Has blogging changed how you think about nature?

I make a point of being outdoors more often and I also take down all those birding books from the shelves more often to research and read about specific birds, locations, and habits rather than just look at the pretty pictures.

Any words of wisdom for new nature bloggers?

Include photos when you can, write well, join one of the networks, comment on other people’s blogs, and get up occasionally to go outside to see the world around you.

If you had it to do over, would you start a blog?

Totally, but I would not recommend more than one at a time. Writing and managing two at once is a huge time-suck.

Anything else you’d like me to ask you, or that you’d like to volunteer without being asked?

In an effort to reach out to other birders who may not know or read English, I have been tagging my posts (photos) with not only the Latin name for the birds but the Spanish names. I have seen a growing number of hits coming in through Google on the Spanish names.

Can you share links to one or two of your favorite posts from the blog?

http://behindthebins.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/roadrunner-vs-flammulated-owl/

http://behindthebins.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/mal-de-mer/

You can reach bevson via her blog, twitter, and stumbleupon or by email to bearfont@gmail.com. Both bevson and I welcome your comments on the interview.