Lost Whatbirders

[Greyhawk]

Does anyone know if all the data from Whatbird is completely lost?

That's a great question. If Kevin or aveschapinas can communicate with the previous owners I'd be interested in any more information about what happened to the site etc...

My assumption would be that is the data could be retrieved intact, the site could be made operational again. Conversely if it can't be made operational again, the data is probably lost forever, which is sad.

[aveschapinas]

I just checked again and the WhatBird forums are appearing as active but not working because of errors. I do think that it might be (probably is?) possible to recover the information but in all honesty I wouldn't hold my breath. The site owner has considered shutting down the forums repeatedly over the past several years, including this time. He has also resurrected them after weeks and months in the past, so that's not impossible. They (owner and his programmer) were working on a major issue but seem to have abandoned that now. Some people have found some content from the site online. If he were to decide to resurrect the forums I guess it would be good to grab your content ASAP.

[Hooded Robin]

I just checked again and the WhatBird forums are appearing as active but not working because of errors. I do think that it might be (probably is?) possible to recover the information but in all honesty I wouldn't hold my breath. The site owner has considered shutting down the forums repeatedly over the past several years, including this time. He has also resurrected them after weeks and months in the past, so that's not impossible. They (owner and his programmer) were working on a major issue but seem to have abandoned that now. Some people have found some content from the site online. If he were to decide to resurrect the forums I guess it would be good to grab your content ASAP.

I found this info (which you have probably seen) suggesting there was a plan in place but it seems to have fallen behind or been abandoned.

https://whatbirdai.com/roadmap

[aveschapinas]

I found this info (which you have probably seen) suggesting there was a plan in place but it seems to have fallen behind or been abandoned.

https://whatbirdai.com/roadmap

I admit I'm not sure what that is exactly? The forums' purpose was always to support or complement the WhatBird App. I know there have been changes in the financing of the app, that haven't always been well received. I just looked and I don't see the app in the Play Store on my phone or online, so I don't know if it's actually available or active now.

[Zoroark]

Regarding WhatBird, I know I first stumbled upon the app around 2016 when they still had a version for Windows Phone.

Then later on, I got tired of Reddit's lack of a dedicated "birding" subreddit that wasn't full of pictures, and the WhatBirdIsThis subreddit has way too many low-effort, low-resolution posts with mourning doves and robins getting upvoted, while many proper ID questions don't even get comments. For example, looking at the recent posts...

Screenshot from 2026-02-08 09-28-00.png (1.58 MiB) Viewed 179 times

Like...seriously? I get we're all newbies at some point, but 700+ upvotes and 100+ replies for a bad photo of turkeys on a subreddit about bird identification? I figured it was time to look for a proper forum (where you'll get one reply with your obvious answer, then the thread will die), and I found both BirdForum and WhatBird.

I had no idea we had a thread going over on BirdForum, though, as I mostly hang around the Birds & Birding board because it fills that discussion desire.

As the WhatBird Forums seem to partially work, especially if logged out or using direct links to certain pages, I'm sure most of the data actually still exists in the database.

[Charlie Spencer]

I had no idea we had a thread going over on BirdForum, though, as I mostly hang around the Birds & Birding board because it fills that discussion desire.

I started the BirdForum thread in late December or early January, a couple of month after Whatbird died. I included the word Whatbird and the URL in both text and title. The notion was the discussion would turn up if any Whatbird members did a search. Fortunately, it worked.

[Kevin]

I did email DLecy some time ago with an email provided by SirVive but never heard back. Also I've never been able to get ahold of Jerry Freidman.