http://ebird.org/content/ebird daily 1 2008-03-13T17:30:02Z http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/the-winter-of-the-snowy-owl Back in late November, eBird reviewer Sam Galick got us ready for the Snowy Owl invasion of 2011-2012. For three months now eBirders across the US and Canada have been reveling in these striking tundra emissaries, which have appeared from coast to coast, many well south of their normal range. eBirders Jesse Ellis and Skye Haas have mined the email reports and listservs to ensure that no Snowy Owl report has escaped eBird's net. Thanks to their efforts, and submissions from thousands of eBirders worldwide, this surely has been the best documented Snowy Owl invasion in the history of ornithology. With three months of data under our belts, and 2-3 months left to enjoy these majestic raptors before they head north, this is a great time to compare this winter's irruption to years past. By any metric, this is one of the larger invasions, but how big is it? What do the geographical patterns tell us? Below we explore this winter's Snowy Owl invasion within a historical context. But first, here's a quick quiz: how many US states have never recorded a Snowy Owl? Which ones? No publisher marshall.iliff 2012-02-08T21:13:58Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/county-quest-vermont As eBird has grown, the program has benefited more and more from local promotion and engagement of the local birding community. Those of us that manage eBird are concentrated in Ithaca, NY (and a couple other cities), and can only interact with a certain number of people in a given year. But the growing community of eBirders around the country are increasingly taking it upon themselves to engage their local communities and get their friends more involved with and excited about eBirding. Many are giving eBird talks and workshops at their local bird club or birding festival (see our promotional material here) and developing other novel ways to get people excited about eBird. Here we'd like to highlight last year's 'Vermont 2011 County Birding Quest', which engendered some friendly competition to make 2011 the best year ever for eBirding in Vermont. No publisher marshall.iliff 2012-02-02T22:11:18Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/data_gaps eBirders often email us and ask where they should go birding in order to make the biggest impact in regions with little data. It's perhaps little surprise that eBird checklist submissions are most dense in areas with large human populations, so getting away from those areas is a good first step for filling in the data gaps in eBird. But seeing these gaps can be really astonishing, and with the help of map wizard Paul Hurtado, we've come up with a few neat ways to visualize eBird data density at the county level. These maps are a visualization of the total number of eBird checklists submitted in each US county in the month of February across all years. These maps show the total number of checklists per square mile of county area--a better way to see data density in states with large counties. Pull up your state map and see how your home county is faring. And better yet, find a county that's white, pink, or yellow, and go do as many eBird checklists as you can there this February! No publisher bls42 2012-01-31T19:28:48Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/embed-photos-in-your-checklists We're getting lots of emails requesting details on how to embed photos into eBird checklists so in case you missed it last time, here it is again! We are excited to report that it is now possible to embed photos within checklists from photo-sharing sites such as Flickr and Picassa! This not only makes the checklists look more attractive, but also makes it easier for reviewers to review and confirm your rare sightings. These images will be viewable in eBird checklists (accessed via My eBird and point maps), in eBird Alerts online, and will be accessible to eBird reviewers, making their job much easier. For example, the Lark Sparrow pictured here will be easy to confirm, and so will the other rarities seen on this day, including a local mega-vagrant at this location -- House Sparrow! View checklist. No publisher marshall.iliff 2012-01-11T22:29:52Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/em201201 We have a fairly small team here at Cornell that develops eBird, and are blessed with a community of tens of thousands of eBirders who have even more ideas of how to improve eBird. One way we hope to expand eBird's functionality and appeal is to make it easier for everyone to access data. A couple years ago we released an eBird API, which gives programmers access to data from eBird to display it in new and novel ways. There are several gadgets and commercial applications that now use eBird data from this API. But one of our favorites was created and is maintained by a college student and this month's eBirder of the Month, Zachary DeBruine. No publisher chris.wood 2012-01-05T18:29:49Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/plos Thanks eBirders! You've done it again. Your active participation in eBird allowed us to publish a paper that highlights how eBird engages the birding community in science and conservation in one of the leading scientific journals in the world, PLoS Biology. We hope that this publication shows the ways that you (the eBird community) shape our thinking about eBird, and also demonstrates how your observations are being used by scientists and the conservation community. Because PLoS Biology is an open access journal, we encourage you to share this link and content with anyone interested in reading, reproducing, or distributing it. Feel free to translate it, post it to listservs, or put it to use in any other way. We hope you view the article here. No publisher chris.wood 2011-12-21T20:56:38Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/rba After releasing Year Alerts last week, we are happy to announce another exciting Alert option -- the eBird Rare Bird Alert. This alert basically takes the eBird Notable Birds Google Gadget and moves it into an eBird Alert environment, meaning that you can now receive hourly or daily email summaries, or just go view rare birds on the web at our eBird alerts page. One key update is the addition of counties to the available alert regions, meaning you can customize your rare bird alert experience more than ever. The new Rare Bird Alert notifies you about any unusual bird that has been reported in your region of interest, and provides a link to the location and to the checklist so you can get more information about the sighting, and make the critical call as to whether it's worth calling in sick to work! No publisher Team eBird 2011-12-19T16:43:55Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/ebirding-your-christmas-bird-counts December 14 will begin the 112th Christmas Bird Count (CBC) season, and the first big weekend of counts will be 17-18 December. The Christmas Count is the largest and longest-running ornithological citizen science project. Its data are a great complement to what we are collecting in eBird, and indeed the CBC has paved the way for eBird in many respects. It is not a problem to enter data in eBird and then submit it for the CBC too, since the two projects are collecting data in similar ways, but at different scales. eBird can be a great way to store your sector-level data and compare it from year to year. No publisher marshall.iliff 2011-12-13T19:09:53Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/RFBL_CA On 6 December, birders working on San Clemente Island off southern California found and photographed a Red-flanked Bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus), only the second ever found in North America outside of Alaska! The Red-flanked Bluetail is an Old World species that breeds mainly in Siberia and winters in southeast Asia. In North America it is a rare vagrant mainly in spring to western Alaska, especially the Aleutians, but in recent years there also have been a few fall records for the Pribilofs and St. Lawrence Island. The only other record outside Alaska was of a juvenile male banded on Southeast Farallon Island, California, 1 November 1989. In the last 20 years Red-flanked Bluetail has expanded its breeding range westward, and records are increasing across Europe and especially in the UK. Read on to enjoy these birders' exciting account of the discovery and subsequent chase--in their words. Get a little taste of California birding at its best, and vicariously 'tick' this true Siberian MEGA-rarity! No publisher bls42 2011-12-08T02:23:26Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/year-alerts We are excited to announce the latest expansion of our Alerts functionality -- the long-awaited Year Alerts. eBird Alerts compare incoming eBird reports to your past submissions to notify you of birds that would be new for you. Alerts can be viewed online or set to send hourly or once-a-day emails. One of the most frequent requests from our users has been the ability to use eBird Alerts to track a year list. We listened and you can now sign up for Year Alerts. With the year drawing to a close, this is the perfect time to see if you can pick up a few new birds for your year list. No publisher marshall.iliff 2011-12-05T20:12:02Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/got-snowies As late fall becomes early winter this year, listserves are buzzing with exciting news of birders finding Snowy Owls south of their normal winter range! Slowly at first, but now quickly picking up steam, Snowy Owl reports continue to mount, signaling a significant movement of this species into the Lower 48 from coast to coast -- or in other words, an irruption year! But what is really causing these birds to move into our area? We need your observations of this species to learn more. Some locations are now hosting multiple Snowy Owls, and new birds are being found nearly every day. With eBird, we now have a great way to track the extent and scale of this year's invasion. Get out there and find your own Snowy Owl, and don't forget to submit your observations to eBird! No publisher bls42 2011-11-30T20:59:31Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/ebirder-of-the-month-mary-gustafson The Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival is taking place this weekend, which means that our current November eBirder of the Month will be buzzing around Harlingen corralling teams of leaders, making sure field trips get off on time, and generally making sure that the 2011 festival comes off as another huge success. Sadly, all this means that Mary won't be getting out in the field as much as she would like. So it seems like an appropriate time to recognize her not only for her hard work as field trip chair for this festival, but also for her unflagging commitment to eBird, both as a user and a reviewer. Moreover, Mary has solidified the Rio Grande Valley Birding festival's commitment to eBird by ensuring that all field trip data are entered into the system, and that all festival participants become aware of the project. This adds up to hundreds of new eBirders each year thanks to this festival! Thanks Mary, and be sure to get out (e)Birding again when things settle down on Monday! No publisher marshall.iliff 2011-11-13T03:15:21Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/hybrid_HALHxRLHA In North America, Red-tailed and Rough-legged Hawks share highly variable plumages, often causing identification headaches for observers during migration and winter. It's easy to chalk up a single odd trait to this variation, but what happens when a bird has several features that just don't fit the mold for either species? Hybridization in raptors is generally rare, and it is especially rare among the familiar species of North American buteos. In late October, an interesting adult buteo was photographed in south-central Kansas that appears to be intermediate between a Harlan's Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis harlani) and a Rough-legged Hawk (Buteo lagopus). Read on to learn more about this record, and to see more photos of this unusual bird. No publisher bls42 2011-11-07T18:26:15Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/ash-throated-flycatchers-fleeing-the-drought The movements of rare birds have long been the subject of theories and postulations. How did they get here? Is there a pattern? Can their appearance be predicted? For Ash-throated Flycatchers in the East, a pattern has been understood for about three decades. Though rare, they predictably appear on the East Coast (Florida to Atlantic Provinces) from early November to mid-December. In fact, during this season one is more likely to encounter an Ash-throated Flycatcher on the East Coast than a Great Crested Flycatcher (which typically depart by the first week of October). Recently, this has coincided with a growing phenomenon of Cave Swallows during the same time frame. But earlier records (of Cave Swallows and Ash-throateds) are quite rare. No publisher marshall.iliff 2011-11-10T15:47:32Z Feature http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/ebird-version-3-launched In the Fall of 2005 we launched eBird Version 2. Major changes to the site at that time included the addition of the 'My eBird' pages, and a redesigned 'look and feel'. We've come a long way since then! eBird Version 3 incorporates many of your ideas, and we're proud of the improvements we've made over the last few years. Your feedback has enabled us to launch eBird globally, helped us create a better and more streamlined data entry system, helped develop the fun side of birding through tools like the 'eBird Top 100', and helped us build better mapping tools that allow you to access the database in a better and more comprehensive manner. We appreciate all your participation, dedication, and support over the years, and we're happy to announce the official launch of eBird Version 3. No publisher bls42 2011-10-07T03:17:00Z Feature