woodcreeper

Greetings bird enthusiasts,

The community that has formed around this site over the last four years has been astounding. You are the reason it works as well as it does, and your contributions are what has kept me going on many a blurry-eyed morning. Now I’m looking to YOU to help take Woodcreeper.com and Badbirdz-Reloaded to the next level.

Currently the sites need support for:

• Annual hosting fees ($20/ month)
• Hardware upgrades; a new computer for running the website, and large-capacity backup drive for archiving imagery ($2,000)
• Hiring a programmer to help me write better scripts to automate the download process AND develop a portable radar migration website to provide interested parties around the country ($500 - $1000)

I had originally set up a tiered membership system, but most of you opted out of receiving anything in the mail (telling me to save the money and use it for the site, which I do appreciate). I do still want to offer you something, though, so if you are signing up and <strong>would</strong> like to receive a bumper sticker or one of my digital photographs (hey, I can email it to you- so there’s no postage!) please check out the respective links and let me know what you’d like.

You can use the Paypal button below to join the Woodcreeper/Badbirdz Flock:

Or, if you’d rather not use Paypal, you may send a check or money order to the following address:

David La Puma
2150 Amwell Rd
Somerset, NJ 08873

The idea here is to both keep woodcreeper.com and Badbirdz-Reloaded going for the “long haul” by making them self sustainable, and develop a portable radar/migration website for distribution across the country and beyond. For a year now, my master plan has been to develop a self-contained web-package that includes all the tools necessary to download the radar, create animated loops of the radar, and post the radar to a website like woodcreeper.com (the website would be included in the package). The idea here is that more people would be willing to run such a website if the logistics were minimal, therefore putting the emphasis on interpreting the radar (the fun stuff). The plan is for the finished product to be public and open sourced, hence not a money making venture. My vision is to create a network of independent but connected radar-migration websites across the country. (could you imagine how awesome it would be to have ten websites across each of the major flyways??? take my word for it; it would be awesome!).

So, at the very least, your financial support will help pay the hosting fees. At the most, your support would help create the next generation of birding tools while at the same time helping us all to better understand one of the great mysteries of avian ecology; Migration.

I hope that you can see the benefit in supporting these sites, and I hope you can share in the vision I have for making it even better than it already is. If you are interested in advertising your organization or business, please contact me at david@woodcreeper.com so we can discuss further. To watch the flock grow, visit the new page here.

Thanks in advance for your support.

David La Puma (woodcreeper)