Thanks Ian, for the time and hard work spent running such a dedicated forum. Thanks for the advice and expertise knowledge especially with help filling in the few rarity forms over the years for myself. Congratulations on the milestone and long may it last! Cheers Gordon
Thank you Ian for starting this forum and to all the birders who post here. It has certainly helped me find out a lot about local places and sightings and encourage to send in records!
Always been a great site , I like looking at the user stats and notice the amazing turnover of birders over the years many who were big posters with thousands of posts who suddenly dissapear over night for whatever reasons , and never log in again , some never to be seen out birding again, others like me just plod on forever lol
Great to hear Ian, congrats! Mad that its been 19 years since the beginning.just made me feel old(er) reading that!! The website and forum definitely made a difference to the birding community across the ten boroughs of GM. Hopefully it has influenced plenty of folk to take on a more active part in recording birds in our area. Long may that continue in these times when it can so often feel like all gloom and doom with declines in bird populations and biodiversity in general. Though a lot of info seems to be circulated more locally via WhatsApp groups, it shouldnt be forgotten how much the exchange of info via the forum has benefitted everyone in the past 19 years.
Next year this forum (along with the Manchester Birding website) will be celebrating its 20th anniversary, yes, its now been running for 19 years! It has gone from strength to strength too, become busier and busier all thanks to you its dedicated users. Though we’ve come close to a million views a month several times before, February 2025 saw that huge figure surpassed for the very first time, recording 1,006,689 views.
So, my sincere thanks to you all, registered member or not, dedicated poster or not, for without you this forum would not be the resource it is, one which is openly and freely available to anyone. Though a million views comes at a fair financial cost, at the end of the day, no one wants to run a forum no ones uses, so long may it continue.
