Bluesky Social

It is now seven months since I ditched X (formerly known as Twitter), which is more than enough time to ponder the pros and cons of such a move. Almost the only aspects I miss relate to bird and moth news/information, and admittedly I do feel rather out of the loop in that regard. Still, I was coping okay. And then the other day I noticed that a couple of tweet-like links on the Portland Bird Observatory blog were not actually tweets - in fact they were nothing to do with Twitter/X at all - and soon found myself investigating something called Bluesky Social.

Bluesky Social looks rather like the Twitter I remember, and appears to work in similar fashion. Several of the birdy contacts I once followed on Twitter now feature on Bluesky, which was enough to get me dipping a toe at least...

So this is me on Bluesky Social

Setting up my Bluesky profile was fun, especially choosing photos for the banner and avatar. Soon I was reminiscing about my almost nine years in West Dorset, and reliving some of the natural history highlights. It has been something of a blast really, with many top-class birds - and not a few moths - but one of the events with which I am most pleased is undoubtedly the accidental discovery of West Bexington's little colony of Tree Crickets. Hence my Bluesky avatar.

First impressions of Bluesky suggest that it is advert-free. It can't last, but yippee while it does. Also, the few birders I have thus far connected with seem largely to post snippets of news and information, links to new blog posts, etc. Great. I will do likewise.

I have no idea whether the birders I have found on Bluesky have likewise ditched Twitter/X, or are simply doubling up while they test the new waters. Back in 2022 I tried a social media platform called Mastodon, as did several other Twitter users. I found it awkward and clunky, and closed my account ages ago. Perhaps Bluesky will go the same way. We'll see. But in the meantime, find me here: https://bsky.app/profile/notquitescilly.bsky.social