Pingback, trackback and backlinks for naturebloggers

Luciana 2 years old - future nature blogger - studying the birds of Australia

My blog the other day was about blogging and how important it is to be connected to other bloggers. I introduced Google Reader for your desktop and a mobile RSS reader such as FreeRange to your Blackberry or smartphone. I suggest you check this post if what I just said had no meaning to you.
Another great way to connect to other bloggers is simply writing about them. Instead of writing a comment in their comment box, you write on your own blog an answer or a comment and this is directed to the comment box of that blog. This is called trackback and pingback.  The difference between the two is subtle when it comes to the end result. Read more how it works on this WordPress link.

If you use wordpress, this is done automatically to other wordpress blogs (supposedly I should say, because there have been some problems reported lately related to WP 2.7. I will let you know how and if it works). To relate other blogs, you specify the blog address in the trackback box. For Blogger there is no trackback function, but you can activate linkback that simulates the service. For more advanced trackback, that you may also want to consider check Haloscan. A couple of years ago Haloscan was standard for trackback for Blogger blogs, but since there is little mention of Haloscan from recent years, my guess, without penetrating too much how this works on Blogger, is that the linkback service has improved and covers much what you need in this respect. Please comment, to let me know how it works. I did a small test in my post about Nature Blog Network blog the other day, and it seemed the pings worked fine with WordPress but only a link showed in those Blogger accounts that had activated linkback. I still have not found a blog that uses Haloscan, so I can’t give any opinion, but as far as I understand it should give a short quote.

Give a little Link-love to each other!

In a series of blogposts, I shall use this technique to comment other blogs and fish for readers to my own blog this way. I suggest you do the same. You probably heard of Blog Carnivals. Well, they work very much in this way. There is no reason why you can not, every once in a while host your own little carnival. While I am at it, I am adding every blog I write about to my Google Reader, and also put a link to my blog roll – and I hope you link back to me and add me to your readers as well.
I am not yet sure exactly what form this will take, but it is likely to be something like “news in my reader”. I am also considering setting up my own carnival for a young birders up to 22 years old that are blogging. More on that in another post. Let me know what you think about this idea?

Some new blogs in my blogroll.

I have read quite a few blogs the last weeks, some for the first time. I am surprise how many good blogs are out there that I had not heard of before. I know many of you would like to get more readers, so a mutual interchanging of mentioning other blogs and specific posts should work for everyone’s benefit.

I have choses to group my blog roll to different categories.

Social Media.

• As I mentioned in my last blog I am doing an e-course during 31 days held by Problogger Darren Rowse. Some great tips are shared. Pretty amazing, this guy got 1000 people signed up to the course. Best part it is free. 11 days have past and it has been extremely useful. One task is to write a blogpost linking to others. In fact I had already, planned to do a blog-roll prior to the asignment, but the course is so good, that the least I can do is to pay a mentioning in my blog. Darren also runs a very popular blog for digital photography.
• John Haydon of corporatedollar.org was one of the first people I followed on Twitter. His specialty is social media marketing for small non-profit organizations. His page is full of great advice. Do you know what the the difference is between pages, groups and profiles on facebook and how to use each the right way? Check out his killer tips in the link given.

New aquintances of birding blogs

• Nutty birder is a blog by two young brothers Eric and Rob Ripma who blog about birds, wildlife and nature photography. I particularly zoom in on their post on plover identification, that they presented a couple of weeks ago. Hand on the heart, can you ID the plovers in this quiz? If not they provide a key with the key features to look for.
• Discovering Alpine birds by Dale Forbes in Austria is an extremely well made blog. He does excellent digiscoping and shares many birding tricks, such as how to clean your lenses in the field. No more dirty T-shirt for me!
• Some birders have been generous in retweeting my blogposts that I have sent out on Twitter. This is much appreciated of course. How to pay back? Well, for starters I tend to check out their blogs and just yesterday I found Laura Kammermeier’s excellent blog called Birds, Words and websites. The title is well choosen, because Laura is a writer and web-consultant and an avid birder. In happenend to land on part 2 of her story about chase for Black-headed Gull at Niagra Falls. I love this story. She says that finding the Black-headed Gull among a couple of thousand Bonnies is like that famous needle in the haystack.
• Rachel Jenkins of Rachelbirder has also been generous with retweeting. She blogs about the wonderfuil nature around the farm where she lives in eastern Kentucky and has some automatic cameras on the trails that catch photos of wild turkeys, deer, foxes and racoons. One of these days, there may be a Puma, as she has found tracks nearby.  In her blog there are lots of photos of nature.  THe last post has an immature Bald Eagle as the star of the show.
• Jochen of Bell Tower birding is one of the funniest birding bloggers I recently aquinted. His posts are extremely witty. Look at this one: “How to avoid being arrested for Bad Bird Photography“.
• Wildbird on the fly is Wildbird magazine’s blog. They are good on news related to birds and had fast a blog post on the shooting of Californian Condors at Big Sur recently.
• A DC Birding Blog by John Beetham – aka Dendroica is one of my favorite blogs. John is generous with retweets on Twitter and also fast on giving advice to anyone stuck with a query. His knowledge and span of blog topics make this a blog I often come back to. I am interested in splits (who isn’t?) so the recent news on the New Crossbill aptly covered by Dendroica is picked to  illustrate  his blog.
• Jeff Gordon’s blog. Jeff is a professional tour guide and his posts are always a good read with many great photos, be it from Ecuador or Panama or at home in Delaware. The posts are often very entertaining spiced with humour and frequently very educational. A recent such post is about hunting Easter eggs in tropical latitudes compared to temperate regions and what consquense the hunt has on  clutch sizes and life strategies.
• I mentioned the NBN interview with Beverly Robertson in my last post about Nature Blog Network blog.  From her blog Behind the Bins I selected an old post called Mal de Mer that was recommended in the interview.  How come a birdwatcher can enjoy and suffer at same time during a pelagic? All about sea sickness.
• Monarch’s Nature Blog is one of the top 10 birding blogs on NBN. I like his American Woodcock video blog posted a few days ago. I salute his work with mentoring teenagers to become naturalists inviting several as guest bloggers on his blog.
• If you are new to bird blogging and your blog will be bird photo oriented, you may consider have Surfbirds.com hosting it, just as Falkland Birder Alan Henry. I have selected his post on Chilean Swallow – a rare bird in the Falklands – as an example of his blog. More examples of Surfbird blogs you find in the right column of the list on the Surfbirds.com blog page.
• John Trapp’s blog – Birds etcetera.  has also been generous to link back to my site. I really like his blog, because he alwasy seems to be coming up with concepts noone else have though of. He has ordered bird blogs into geographacial regions in his sidebar. Nor th America has no less than 468 bloggers! Britain has 237, while South America – mine included – has a modest 16. The other day John posted another song and video about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker – The Moss Piglets.  With a slightly more talented singer with more than one octave register – less David Byrne (Talking Heads) like – this swiinging song would be a true hit.
• Another top 10 birding blog is BirdFreak run by Eddie Callaway and Jenniger Outcalt. This has all the qualities in the world to become BIG. They do a lot of work to try to get kids to start birdwatch and have written two good downloadable manuals. They also host a weekly event called Bird Photography Weekly and do great bird book reviews. I have chosen to illustrate the blog with a book review of the Swedish bird painter Lars Jonsson (A hero to me ever since I started birding). His  new coffee table book is called Paintings from a near Horizon.
• American Birding Associations new blog Peeps online is only about a year old, but it is becoming a good summeries of the best birds seen all over the country. Here is an example. A Cuban Black-Hawk of unknown provinence has been sighted and photographed in Georgia on April 10 which would a new ABA record if accepted.
• Dawn has a bloggy blog, I often come back to. She lives with her husband Jeff in a motorhome after having sold the house 7 years ago and now lives a nomadic lifestyle travellign all over the US. The blog is one of the best out there with a very attractive design. I have chosen to illustrate her blog with a recent unsuccessful morel hunt, that instead gave an owl. Stalking the wild Morel. Who gives a Hoot?
• 10000birds. I keep on coming back to this great blog. Charlie is now in Panama. Here is an update from Canopy Tower.
• Last but not least. I am about to start a new carnival for young birders up to 22 years old. Ali Iyoob in North Carolina is only 14, but already a blogger since a month back. His blog is called “Ali’s birding Journal – the life of an obsessed birder.  Here is a teaser Photo Quiz.

Hope you liked this little carnival. If all start facilitating the backlink option on Blogger and check out the Haloscan software, let me know how it works for you and if you start getting more readers and subscribers this way. Please send me suggestions of blogs of birders up to 22 years old.