Canada

Please join us in congratulating Greg Wagner of High River, Alberta, winner of the March 2015 eBird Challenge, sponsored by Carl Zeiss Sports Optic. Our March winner was drawn from among those who submitted at least 20 complete checklists containing one or more species of waterfowl in the month of March. Greg’s name was drawn randomly from the 2,096 eBirders who achieved the waterfowl challenge threshold.  Greg will receive new ZEISS Conquest HD 8×42 binoculars for his eBirding efforts. We asked Greg to tell us a little more about himself, his use of eBird, and his love of birds – read on for more!

I first really became aware of eBird in October 2011 when I was approached to be the volunteer Important Bird Area (IBA) Caretaker for Frank Lake, south of Calgary, Alberta. The lake is 5 minutes from my home and is a site that I have regularly visited for decades. Because eBird is the reporting vehicle for the IBA program, I began using it to record bird observations for my trips to Frank Lake and elsewhere. I am now pleased to report that as of the Easter long weekend, there are an average of more than 40 complete checklist per week for the site. There have also been more than a thousand historical checklists submitted to eBird for the lake, with several hundred more still to be entered. There is now a substantial database on bird occurrence at the lake, which can be used to inform management, land use and development activities – thanks to eBird! My only regret is that I didn’t discover eBird sooner so that more of my birding information could have been recorded.

As a professional wildlife ecologist I know how important it is to keep detailed information on wildlife populations. eBird provides an easy means for doing this and the BirdLog app allows data to be readily recorded in the field. Once the site visit is done, just press submit and it is sent to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and stored forever. The information is readily available for analysis and is an invaluable tool informing bird conservation, ecology and management. I have also developed an ecotourism plan for the local area. Frank Lake, which draws large numbers of local, out-of-province and international birders to the area, is the cornerstone of this plan. The town of High River now has links to the eBird bar graph checklists of Frank Lake and other nearby areas to encourage birders to use the area.

[Team eBird note: As you can see above, the Frank Lake area has many eBird Hotspots. These locations allow eBirders to submit observations for the exact location they were at, and using the Hotspot Explorer, view each of those hotspots separately. But there is also a way to view the data from all these hotspots in one location, since the hotspots shown above in the Frank Lake complex span two Important Bird Areas: Frank Lake (north); and Frank Lake (south).

Using the IBA-specific summary tools in eBird, we are able to visualize all data that are submitted to eBird within the confines of the IBA, in forms like this bar chart of sightings. All IBAs in Canada, the United States, and Mexico are available in eBird to view as distinct regions, and can be summarized in the same way. In 2014, IBA Canada launched a new IBA Canada eBird protocol to better integrate IBA monitoring with the data collection of eBird. You can find out more about the IBA Program in Canada and explore all of our 600 IBAs on the IBA Canada website.]