Ordinarily, I take the 80GB+ of recordings gathered through the year, make spreadsheets from them, then fill Dropbox folders so my bird’r buddies can help identify the sounds—an arrangement which works reasonably well, though it does ask a certain administrative commitment from everyone involved, particularly the person standing between the microphones and the spreadsheets.

This year, I started posting the recordings directly into the iNaturalist project / cliffLAND Saunter Journal instead

Now the IDs can happen more naturally, with my usual helpers—and others from the community—adding observations as they come across them, rather than waiting for me to transport audio files around the internet like a slightly overcommitted courier of frogs.

As an added benefit, the land trust website now automatically pulls in any observation made within the site boundaries as well, which means the whole system has begun updating itself quietly in the background, with noticeably less ceremonial handling from me.

The technologies are finally beginning to cooperate with one another.

Though there remains a reasonable chance they were always willing, and I was simply approaching them from the wrong end of the forest. -Chad