Instagram is an app that is available on most phones and on the personal computer and allows people to post photos for viewing by others. I started by wanting to see pictures of my family posted to Instagram. You must register and sign in with a Userid (mine is johnburns6) and create a password.

Once I was on Instagram I found many birders were posting pictures of birds they had photographed. As I was photographing birds on the walks with Miles, as well as on my own, I decided to put some photos up.

You can “follow” other people by clicking on the word “Follow” and when you do their photos will be there for you to view when you log on. Similarly other people can “follow” you and they will see every picture you posted. There are people who adjudicate photos and put only the best ones up under their names. Photos can have tags (starting with #) assigned to them. So, if you are looking for birds there are many groups such as #birding, “nut_about_birds, #almightyirds

Instagram has photos of just about everything, but nothing x rated. My wife, for example, post photos and follows people under the categories of cooking, baking, and home décor.

Once I started looking I found some quite amazing pictures of birds from around the world. I look at birding pictures by:

Following individuals eg @udnleo (Taipai), @birds_of_Newfoundland, @eriktig (Sweden)

Following best photo groups eg @your_best_birds, @audubondsociety, @almightybirds

I included some screen shots to provide an idea of what is there for birders.

I enjoy seeing birds from around the world (there are over 10,000 species) as well as seeing great photos of our local birds. Some of the photos also have descriptions of the birds, the habitats and comments by others on the birds.

John Burns