Birding News and Features

PRBO Conservation Science’s 31st Annual Bird-A-Thon

Support bird conservation—Go Birding!

Count for PRBO’s 31^st Annual Bird-A-Thon. In Bird-A-Thon, individuals and teams count the total number of bird species seen or heard in a 24-hour period, between September 1 through October 15, 2008! Just as in a walk-a-thon, participants ask friends, family and businesses for donations to raise funds for PRBO’s cutting-edge conservation and research. Counters also compete for prizes – spotting scopes, binoculars etc.

Final Results in for April Tricolored Blackbird Survey!

As part of its ongoing effort to conserve and restore Tricolored Blackbird colonies in California, Audubon California in April 2008 coordinated a statewide survey of the species in partnership with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The survey – largely conducted by citizen science volunteers – recorded significantly more Tricolored Blackbirds than other recent surveys.

In all, just under 395,000 Tricolored Blackbirds were observed. A total of 155 volunteers participated in the 2008 survey, visiting 361 historic and new sites in 38 counties within California. The new report discusses the results of the survey, and includes some initial analysis about what these numbers might mean for Tricolored Blackbird conservation.

The survey itself constitutes a success for Audubon California’s citizen science program wherein volunteers in the field contribute directly to science and conservation.

Southbound Shorebirds Return to California!

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!

eBird & Flickr -- Share Your Bird Photos

We receive many requests from users who would like to be able to upload images of birds that they have photographed. This is particularly true for rarities (birds seen outside their normal range, or at an odd time of year). In the long-run we would like to integrate this feature directly into eBird, but we have come up with a short-term solution. We have created a group within the popular photo-sharing site, Flickr (www.flickr.com). We encourage anyone who has photographs of rare birds to share them with this group (making sure, of course, that you have already submitted the record to eBird!). Our intent is to provide a venue for people to photographically document species seen outside their normal range, outside their normal seasonal occurrence, or unexpectedly large counts of birds.