There's no denying that native plants bring more birds to your yard.  But how do you know a native plant from a non-native?  In an effort to make planting quality backyard bird habitat easier on everyone, the National Audubon Society has launched a new Native Plant Database. Based on zip codes, the resource truly targets plants that provide the "best results" for local birds. The page can generate a list of plants hand-selected by Audubon experts specifically for your area. Results can be sorted by "Best," by "Types of Plant," or by "Type of Bird" species you are looking to attract. Want to pick a native grass which attracts more chickadees to your yard? Try Indian Wood Oats or Little False Bluestem. Want a vine which attracts Wood Warblers? Try Frost Grapes. The list sorts easily, provides scientific names so you're sure you're buying the right sort of Sumac, and even provides contact info for a few nearby Audubon experts and local native plant suppliers like our friends and Bluegrass Birding Festival supporters Shooting Star Nursery.

---

At the recommendation of a few local birders looking for an easier online source for reporting news about and posting pictures of central Kentucky birds, CKAS has launched a new free listserv. We're calling it Central Kentucky Birders and you can find it at CKyBirds@Groups.IO. It is already up and running; we encourage you to join and participate. Though the provider relatively new to the market (Groups.IO was only launched in 2014), they aim to provide "the most advanced email group service on the Internet" by being "packed with powerful features that make e-mail groups more useful." They appear to be easy to join, their service looks easy to manage, and they offer things we'd never heard of like Github, Trello, and syncing with Slack Teams, and their basic service with 1GB attachment and file storage is completely free to groups of any size.

We know what you are thinking... Yes, to an extent, this e-mail service was already provided by the ASK list and by Birdky, but the former is underused and difficult to manage and the latter is too far-flung, covering every bird sighting from Paducah to Pikeville. CKAS had also heard that a small group of local Fayette, Scott, and Woodford County self-described life list birders recently formed a private e-mail circle to keep each other posted regarding local first of season and rare bird reports, likely due to limitations of the existing lists. So it seemed obvious to us that some new resource was needed, that it should be easy-to-use and focused primarily on our area.

To get a better idea of what Groups.IO has to offer birding groups and to check out how easy it really might be to use and manage, CKAS President Tony Brusate signed up for a few other birding groups offered by this provider and he and Mark Tower also built a "sample group" to play with and test out managing its features. We are happy to report that, overall, the Groups.IO service seems very easy to use, provides its emails in multiple formats to meet any and all subscription preferences, allows pictures to be shared and saved easily and without a Flicker account, and should prove to work as a good communication tool for local birders. So we're giving it a try. Joining is free: you can sign up at https://groups.io/g/CKyBirds, just click the blue "+ Join This Group" link. We'll keep the Central Kentucky Birds page up and running for the next few months and likely discuss its pros and cons at the December CKAS meeting. If we find it lacking, Groups.IO also promises to be "easy to transfer" to another provider; but our Beta testers think it'll fly.