Birding News and Features

Upload your AviSys list to eBird

Have you been reluctant to use eBird because you didn’t want to enter your entire life list? Well, no more excuses. We're pleased to announce that Jerry Blinn has launched a new AviSys utility that allows users to export records directly to eBird. We have worked closely with Jerry on this process over the past 18 months. He has been dedicated to making sure that AviSys users not only can export their data to eBird but that they also have the tools available in AviSys to make their observations more valuable by adding associated effort information to each birding outing. We thank Jerry for his hard work on this and we'd like to extend a big WELCOME to all you AviSys users!

August 2008 Taxonomic Update

With the August 2008 release of the 49th supplement of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) Check-List, it is time again for a revision of the common names, scientific names, and species order used in eBird. These revisions occur twice a year--in January and August. This revision includes a large number of changes to the South American Check-List, including several "splits" and a few "lumps". And, we have added many bird names that eBird users have recommended over the past several months--thanks to all for providing these. Read more about the eBird taxonomy, how it was created, what it includes and does not include.

New: Important Bird Areas of Alaska Map

Is it any surprise that Alaska has more globally significant bird habitats than any other state in the union? Over the last seven years, Audubon Alaska has combed Alaska for areas essential to the survival of bird populations. There are currently 145 sites statewide that are officially identified as Important Bird Areas (IBAs). The majority of them are also recognized as globally or continentally significant. In fact, Alaska has almost half of all globally significant IBAs identified in the United States.

Make Your Checklists More Meaningful!

As the eBird database grows by leaps and bounds, it is becoming ever more valuable. Your observations are making a huge difference in our understanding of birds at many levels. Our scientists are now analyzing your data to find new patterns in bird distribution, abundance and population trends. Although every record submitted to eBird is valuable, only observations with effort can be used in these more rigorous analyses, so we would like to promote several bird survey techniques that we consider most valuable in this regard. Make the most of your birding by conducting traveling counts, stationary counts and area counts in a more meaningful way. In this feature we'll give examples of how to make your observations count for bird conservation!

New Location Management Tools Launched!

When eBird started in 2002 we didn't have the technology to allow you to select a location from a map for data entry (we do now--hooray!). Because of that it was harder to be aware of existing eBird hotspots, and many users created their own versions of these places. We've been asked for a long time to rectify this by creating tools that will allow you to merge your personal locations, and all associated data, with existing eBird hotspots. We've recently upgraded the "Manage My Locations" option found under "My eBird" to allow for this, along with a suite of other useful data management tools. Now you can easily combine your data from a duplicate personal location with eBird hotspots so that it can be shared by all.

300 Million Birds Say “Thanks!”

Good news out of the boreal forest in Canada! Recent conservation action in Ontario has helped preserve over half of the province's, boreal forest, resulting in a massive protected area for boreal birds. Just to put this in perspective, quick calculations of the area to be protected may support as many as 300 MILLION birds including a million Bay-breasted Warblers, 1.5 million Blackpoll Warblers, over 4 million Dark-eyed Juncos, 1.2 million Yellow-bellied Flycatchers. The area to be protected is larger than 40 of the 50 U.S. states, and larger than all the designated wilderness areas combined in the Lower 48. This is one of the biggest conservation victories in decades for birds of the United States--but it happened in Ontario! Read more of this open "Thank you letter" by Jeff Wells of the Boreal Songbird Initiative.

Bird Counting 101

At eBird we encourage you to make your best estimate of bird numbers on every checklist. Your best estimate of numbers is always more useful than putting an "X' to indicate presence. An "X' could be one or it could be a thousand! We can always simplify numbers back to presence/absence for analysis. Your estimates of numbers help us judge relative abundance, and are an important part of checklist data. So what do you do if you're having trouble counting birds? Large flocks of birds are always challenging, and in this article we'll talk about some techniques for estimating numbers so that you can practice and become more proficient at counting birds.This will be the first in a series of articles discussing techniques for counting birds.

Bird Counting 201

In this second installment of our series on counting birds we'll discuss some approaches to counting more problematic groups of birds including large numbers, moving flocks, and mixed species flocks. How do the hawk counters do it? How should you count that constant stream of Cormorants passing your local headland? How do you go about picking out different species in large flocks of birds. "Birds of a feather flock together!" Well, sometimes, but more often than not we're presented with heterogeneous flocks of birds comprised of many different species. Learning how to look at species ratios within flocks is important, and developing an eye for picking out what is different will help you find that proverbial needle in the haystack that we're all hoping for--a rarity. Armed with the tips in this column we hope you'll improve your ability and begin to enjoy counting birds.