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Enter "Fall Season" sightings by 13 December

November 30, 2009
Enter "Fall Season" sightings by 13 December

Sedge Wren, Orleans Co., NY, 5 July 2009 © Christopher L Wood

When you submit your sightings to eBird, we make those observations available to researchers, conservationists, and others with an interest in birds. We also provide these records to the authors of North American Birds and regional journals focused on bird distribution. At the end of each season, records for each state are made available for download for authors and editors of these publications. All you need to do to have your fall records (1 August 2009 - 30 November 2009) included is submit them to eBird prior to the 13th of December.

There are many ways that you can help. First, you can make sure that your own sightings are entered by the 7th of August. You can also encourage your friends and family members to submit records to eBird. Consider using your species comments field to provide descriptions of rarities, links to photos, or other information that will be of use to these editors. Beyond that, you can post messages to listservs explaining that by submitting records to eBird, anyone can quickly make their observations available to these journals and improve our collective understanding of bird distribution.

If you were already a regular reporter to these journals, we certainly encourage that you continue to correspond with the editors directly. You can click Download My Data to generate an excel file that you can mark up to highlight your birds of interest from the winter season. But please do remember that these editors will see your reports anyway through the eBird download.

We are anxious to make this service available to more state, provincial, and regional journals. If you are are a regional editor for a publication and would like to access these files, please contact us. If a regional editor for your area is not drawing on eBird data, please put them in touch with us!

And if you are not familiar with North American Birds, it is the journal of record summarizing changes in status and distribution across the North American continent (from Panama to Alaska). Regional editors from each part of the continent summarize notable sightings and place them in regional context, and a "Changing Seasons" summary places the season in a continental context. North American Birds is published four times a year, is filled with top-caliber photos of rarities, and costs about $30 to subscribe.