In July 2009 Neil Fitzgerald and Brent Stephenson launched the new BirdingNZ.net birding forum. Based around an online Bulletin Board based system, this forum was launched to supplement the already popular BIRDING-NZ newsgroup. With an online approach allowing images to be posted it is hoped that this too will help to further build an online birding community in New Zealand.

"The discussion forum is free and easy to join, allowing anyone with an interest in NZ birds—resident scientists, international twitchers, and everyone in between—to find and share information. A key goal of the site is to allow people to quickly and easily distribute details about rare bird observations, so others may also have a chance to see something special. To help achieve this goal, registered members can easily subscribe to receive an email alert of posts made to the Bird Sightings and Alerts forum. These alerts are a light, plain text copy of the full posted message—easy to recieve over slow connections and mobile devices, and allowing users to quickly decide if it is something they would like to follow up."