The Idea of bird-lens; Projects

Having seen many informative websites concerning Bird Behaviour, Bird Identification, Bird Migration, Birding Trips or Rare Bird sightings in the English-speaking countries, I had the impression, that a comparable platform for and from birders – professionals, scientists and amateurs – is missing for the middle European area. Not only for Germany, but especially so.

So I dedicated time and resources to create this websites with blogs of very knowledgeable authors with the foremost interests : Birds, Birds, Birds, Photography, travel and nature.

These blogs are intended to capture the interest in birds in general and showcase pictures taken in “wild” places and in suburban areas all over the world, and share the experience of making them. For some years I generate some income from the sale of picture rights of bird photographs. A big project with Professor Dr. Michael Wink, director of the department of biology at the University of Heidelberg has been finished. Another comparable project with Dr. Fiedler, has been finalized, too.

Up to now the procedure based mainly on personal communication. An author inquires pictures, which he or its friends do not have, with me. Often only a few days before press release. On the basis of my preliminary work of many years birding, the many ornithologist journeys and the back office organization with access to a well linked ACCESS/EXCEL data base and the picture documentation software it is possible today to access and select some 425,000 digital images and additionally well over 10,000 slides images of altogether up to now 3,467 species of birds. In order to develop „the business “with the sale of picture rights of bird images on a more professional basis, I decided to set-up an own website with a webshop for the download of images. In addition preliminary work were necessary. An analysis of the inquiries, which came in the past mainly via personal relations, resulted in some conclusions.

Besides the pictures, which I could publish in the Standard work for the Ornithology „Handbook of the Birds of the World “of the publisher Lynx the biggest part of inquiries focus on western Palaearctic species. Here mainly the rarer species – of course.

The idea is, to create a One-stop shop. Thus everyone interested in western palaearctic species of birds shall focus on www.bird-lens.com and finds every species, which is needed. The process of payment & download is very straightforward and supports a professional approach of image selection for authors and publishers.

I hope you’ll enjoy the shop as well as the blogs. Keep going…………..

Some substantial investment in journeys to complete the image-database was necessary. The coverage of images of western palaearctic of birds is now with the common bird almost complete – only a substantial number of high pelagic birds and island endemics are missing. I detected/ encountered up to now 821 species of the official number of 963 species which has already occured in the Western Palearctic. The total image coverage of the official list is roughly 80%, which means 818 photographed species which are on the WP-list plus several subspecies.  For the proper performance of the website project this is sufficient. But further trips to relevant sites will increase that coverage even more.

www.bird-lens.com is currently ranked in the Alexa ranking at place 3,541,462, which, in view of the topic and the actual working time, is worth mentioning. www.bird-lens.com is on-line from December 2011 on and shows in its shop (rider „Picture shop “) already altogether more than 5,364 images of birds in an English and a German language version. The particularly interesting “specials” of western palaearctic bird species are shown prominently in a separate window.

J. F.

Projects

I-Phone/Pad: „Vogel Id – Gartenvögel Deutschlands – Vögel Erkennen, Bestimmen und Zählen“ von Mullen & Pohland GbR

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