MUSKEGON, Mich. - iSportsWire -- Muskegon, MICHIGAN — MichiganBirds.net is live and it started the way a lot of hobby projects do: with a folder full of photos and nowhere good to put them.

I've been photographing birds around Michigan for years, at the state parks, the wildlife areas, the county preserves, and honestly a few from my own yard. The pictures piled up. Social media wasn't the right home for them; the good ones scroll away in a day and nobody can find them again. I wanted something permanent, organized by species, that someone could actually look up when they were trying to figure out what just landed on their feeder.

So I built it. MichiganBirds.net now has a page for every regularly occurring Michigan bird, with photographs, the months you can expect to see it here, what it eats, where it lives, and side-by-side notes on the species people most often confuse it with. New photos go up regularly, as the seasons turn and I get out with the camera, the galleries keep growing.

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The part I'm most excited about: your sightings

Somewhere in the middle of building this, it stopped being just about my photos. If I've seen something worth writing down, so has every other birder in Michigan and there ought to be an easy place to say so.

That's the sightings feature. You pick the bird, you pick the park, and you're done. No account, no signup, no app to download. On a phone, the site will suggest the closest location for you. Your sighting joins everyone else's on a statewide map you can filter by date, species, or rarity, plus a running list of the latest reports from around Michigan.

I'd love for that map to fill up. It's more interesting with more people on it.

Come take a look

This is a hobby site, plain and simple. There's no membership, no paywall. If you enjoy watching birds in Michigan or photographing them, or just wondering what that noisy thing in the maple tree is, this site was built for you.

Visit https://michiganbirds.net to browse the species guide, look at the photos, or add a sighting of your own.

About MichiganBirds.net

MichiganBirds.net is an independent hobby website documenting the birds of Michigan through original photography, species guides, and sightings submitted by the public. It is run by one person and is not affiliated with any agency or organization.