Birding News and Features

ISS newsletter for 2009

The annual newsletter from ISS/PRISM has now been published and is available for download here. Each year the newsletter, which is sent out to all participants, provides perspectives on the populations and seasonal patterns of shorebirds based on ISS/PRISM data. This year's newsletter highlights some of the visualizations available in ISS eBird. The newsletter describes ways that you can explore seasonal changes in frequency, abundance, and other counts by using the eBird data exploration tools. In addition, the June 2009 newsletter presents an historical review of the changes in Red Knot populations and how those have varied geographically. Read on for insight on how these changes may indicate that long-distant migrant knots are now much rarer in Massachusetts, while the short-distant migrants that winter in Florida may in fact be using Massachusetts staging areas more.

What are the ISS and PRISM surveys?

In 1974 the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences organized the International Shorebird Surveys (ISS) to gather information on shorebirds and the wetlands they use. Almost 80,000 census counts have been completed at 1200 locations in 47 states of the U.S., with additional counts from Central and South America too. PRISM is a complementary project aimed to better track population change in shorebirds. The take-home message now is clear; many species of shorebirds depend on strategic migration staging sites. And furthermore, many of these species are showing dramatic declines.

ISS eBird Portal now active

The International Shorebird Surveys (ISS) and the Program for Regional and International Shorebird Monitoring (PRISM) are now being run through the eBird website. If you are unfamiliar with these shorebird surveys, which depend on the efforts of volunteers, you can read more about them here. For those of you that already participate, it is very very important that you enter your ISS surveys only through the ISS eBird site. Please use this site only for your ISS surveys, and please use core eBird or your local eBird portal for your other bird observations. This allows us to identify which surveys were ISS surveys and which ones were not. But don't worry, every sighting you submit to eBird, whether to core eBird, to ISS eBird, or to a regional portal such as California eBird or aVerAves (Mexico), will be completely integrated with your personal eBird account.