If you are active on social media, you can also follow Bird Watching Asia on Instagram. I actually held back from Instagram because I did not want to be distracted, as most of you will know how demanding that social platform can be.

Well, after a full year of doing up the main website, I finally gave in and activated the Bird Watching Asia Instagram account in June of 2021, one and a half years after creating the account name.

Bird Watching Asia on Instagram

First of all, you should know that my main mission is to promote bird watching in Malaysia and not showcase beautiful bird photos. As some of you may know, Instagram started as a platform to show off your best photos.

This means that many out there are on Instagram to show their best bird photos, their sharpest and close up photos of birds, their rarest bird photos and so on. It is all about the likes, the comments and the satisfaction that drives this behaviour.

I mean, there is no wrong in doing that because the platform was meant to showcase your best photos and so on. However, as mentioned, I am not using Instagram for that purpose, but to provide additional information and knowledge about bird watching in Malaysia and possibly around Southeast Asia.

Depending on how well the platform grows, I may extend my bird watching to overall Asia, but this will only happen in the long run and not so soon. But it also depends on the outcome of the Covid19 pandemic that has sort of crippled the tourism and travel industry since early 2020.

Well, we can all hope for the best and that we all get vaccinated for the pandemic to fade away. I know things will not go back to the same as pre-Covid, and the new normal will be a little hard to adjust to.

But I also know that once we can start travelling (hopefully in 2022), bird watching in Malaysia will be an easier tourism activity to participate in versus mass tourism.

Conclusion

There you have it, an introduction to Bird Watching Asia on Instagram and my objectives are for doing this. If you are new to IG or already active there, you can always follow me to see what updates I will post on this account.

Also, if you are on Twitter, you can follow my Bird Watching Malaysia Twitter account for sharing photos, articles and retweets of bird watching. And if you are active on Facebook, which is also the most popular social platform, I also have an open Facebook group called Bird Watching Malaysia.

Since 2016, many birders, photographers and enthusiasts have taken to social media platforms to showcase their work and so on, which resulted in many groups, pages and account on the same topics.

This is great as for years (2012 to 2015), I have been giving talks at the Borneo Bird Festival in Sabah to encourage birders to get online, always promoting social platforms, but that took a while and finally, from 2016, I saw more and more doing so.

To conclude, please note that I will not be going all IG crazy and posting photos daily but rather more relaxed. This means that I may post one or two photos a week for my Bird Watching Asia on Instagram account.