About two hours ago, we (Curtis Hawthorne and David Ringer) launched Birdstack, a free, online world bird listing service. We’ve been working on Birdstack since June 2007, when we were in Yaounde, Cameroon. We’d been discussing it for even longer than that, since sometime back in 2005. We are relieved, thrilled, and excited to see it come alive at last.

Birdstack is for everyone who cares about birds. Whether you stay at home and watch the familiar birds at your feeder, or whether you slough through swamps in distant corners of the world, you can use Birdstack.

Birdstack lets you record observations of birds seen anywhere on the planet. You can plot your observations with startling accuracy on interactive maps and group the observations into trips. You can use Birdstack’s powerful query builder to create almost any kind of list you can imagine. And once you have a list, you can publish it as an Atom feed, grab a Stack (a special widget) and stick in on your own blog or website, or download your data for customized queries and analysis.

Birdstack uses the IOC (Gill and Wright) list for taxonomy and nomenclature, and whenever there are updates, they will be automatically integrated with your observations. A full suite of tools, from a simple spell check to user-generated alternate name suggestions, will help you find the birds you’re looking for.

Birdstack includes a variety of community-building features, including comments, forums, rankings, and a “recent observations” board. If you like, you can use Birdstack as your own personal listing software, keeping everything private, but it’s going to be much more fun to participate in the community.

Finally, we are working with the great folks at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to develop a way for Birdstack users to submit their North American data to eBird. We expect to launch the first phase of this feature sometime in the next month, so stay tuned.

For more information, you can go through the Birdstack tour and documentation.

Before we close (we’re sure you’re anxious to go sign up), we want to thank all the people around the world (on four continents!) who helped us beta-test Birdstack. Without their patience and attention to detail, Birdstack wouldn’t be what it is today. So thank you, John Beetham, Patrick Belardo, Lisa Berger, Mike Bergin, Rasmus Bøgh, Brent Bradbury, Charley Burwick, Sally Conyne, Geoff Darling, Tobias DiGennaro, David Donsker, Duncan Fraser, Brent Garber, Frank Gill, Eng-Li Green, Dave and Melanie Hawthorne, Sarah Hess, Marshall Iliff, Dan Jones, Josh Jones, Craig Miller, Jason Pike, David and Kathy Ringer, Kristel Ringer, Frew Schmidt, Claudia Staab, Jason Steele, Greg Swick, Nathan Swick, Brian Taylor, Forrest and Nancy Van Cott, Sara Van Cott, Jan Hein van Steenis, YC Wee, Anders Weijnitz, Charles Wesley, and Chris Wood.

Thanks to all, and good birding. Now, go try out Birdstack!

David and Curtis