A dedicated task force organized by the Board recently tackled a full overhaul of the WFO website, which hadn’t had a design refresh in several years. Its members included Shaun Wilde, Managing Director; Isabelle Busch, Board member; Bryce Robinson, past Board member; Lauren Smith, WFO Newsletter Editor; Maci MacPherson, WFO Administrator; Todd Benton, the website contractor; and myself. The task force all have design, science communications, and marketing backgrounds and met for several months, discussing intent, reviewing design options, and fine-tuning content.

New Website Features:

• Streamlined navigation for greater accessibility
• Added bilingual, English/Spanish feature to foster increased participation
• Improved readability with new fonts and complementary colors
• Added pictures and bios for the board and staff so you can get to know us
• Solicited beautiful new imagery, with species names on mouseover (to foster learning), from several member photographers – send us your best photos!

California Bird Records Committee and Hawaii Bird Records Committee:

After the website’s soft rollout a few months ago, members brought to our attention that the California Bird Records Committee and Hawaii BRC, which are both committees of WFO, were difficult to find. We had added them to a cool new map of all the bird record committees in our region, but this didn’t honor their special connection to the organization. The CBRC and HBRC are now featured on their own Bird Records Committees page found in the Our Work menu. 

The Western Birds Site:

Western Birds has its very own site now! The Open Journal Systems (OJS) project written about previously (see: Western Birds Transitions to a New Platform to Enhance Scholarly Accessibility, November 2025) and in Dan Ruthrauff’s article (Western Birds and the role of low-impact journals in conservation) in this newsletter, provided a new platform for the journal’s online presence. It is accessible from the WFO site but is a separate website. The transition to OJS is making Western Birds discoverable by Google Scholar and is significantly increasing our reach, but we all agree that there are some improvements needed around layout and searchability. The web site team is working with members of the Publications Committee, including Phil Unitt, Western Birds Editor, and Angela Tidmore, Western Birds Editorial Intern, to further improve the user experience. 

Please take a flight through the new Western Field Ornithologists and Western Birds sites and provide any feedback to contact@westernfieldornithologists.org. 

June 2026 | Debbie Van Dooremolen, Board President