eBird County Birding

How to participate?

The first thing to do is to find out where you can have the biggest impact by exploring new areas. To help you find places with little data, we've included a file at the bottom of this page that shows how many checklists have been submitted in each US county. To make the biggest impact try to go birding in counties that have the fewest checklists in your state. Alternatively, if you live in a very large county (e.g., San Diego, CA), simply try to find areas where you know very few birders typically visit. Remember also, that ideally we want checklists spread throughout the year. Many birding areas are seasonal: birders may visit for the breeding birds but ignore the area in winter and may leave migration hotspots unchecked in July and January. Consider not just what areas are unbirded, but what seasonal biases there are too. Once you've determined where you are going to go birding, follow the protocols outlined below to make the best contribution.

Targeting different habitats

When visiting a county for the first time the first thing birders will want to do is visit the places that will be obviously good for birds (e.g., National Wildlife Refuges, lakes, and birder favorites like dumps and sewage plants). In addition to these obvious choices, it's important to make observations at other locations that might seem less 'birdy'. A good way to ensure complete coverage of a county is to determine what kinds of habitats are available. There are relatively simple ways to do this now by using freely available online tools. For example, using Google Maps we can visually explore a county, and quickly determine what the major habitat types are, especially if we set the map view to "satellite" mode. Ask yourself simple questions like, "Is there a lot of agriculture in the county?" If so, make sure that you schedule some bird counts there. The best thing to do is to design a route that allows you to hit as many habitats as possible in your allotted time. If you only have one day, make sure to sample a few areas outside the obvious choices for birds; habitats like agricultural fields, barren desert, mountain slopes, and even suburban and downtown areas in cities each have their own suite of birds and should be intentionally included in any serious county birding effort.

What do you do once you get there?

By working with our team of scientific analysts we've come up with a suggested protocol for how to best sample these areas. Don't worry, you'll see lots of birds! In fact, it's pretty flexible to accommodate the types of birding you like to do, with a few different things thrown in the mix. Always remember to be as precise as possible when plotting your locations.

For this effort there are two types of locations: 1. birder-selected locations (that means you picked it!); and 2. random locations (that means you didn't!). How you record birds at each of these locations differs slightly.

The concept of the "birder-selected location" is any location where you decide to stop because you think it has potential to produce good birding. Use your "birder intuition" to find these! For example, if you're driving along and you see a lake that is full of shorebirds and ducks, you'll obviously want to stop there and do a checklist. This will be your first "birder-selected location". At "birder-selected locations" you are free to bird as you see fit, as long as you use one of the effort-based protocols (e.g., traveling, stationary, or area count) and keep a complete checklist of birds. You can spend as much time as you like, and try to find as many birds of as many species as possible.

The concept of "random locations" is a new one for eBird. The goal is to record bird observations from locations that were not selected by you because they looked good for birds. By including random places that may or may not be good birding, the results might be more representative of the available habitat in a given region. Ideally, for each "birder-selected location" where you do a count, you'll do a second count at a "random location". To find your first "random location" simply travel a specified distance from your last "birder-selected location", stop at the next safe pull-off, and then do a count. How far do you have to travel? That depends on the habitat. The options are 3 and 5 miles. If you can stop after 3 miles and you feel reasonably sure that you won't be counting the same birds you just counted at the previous stop (e.g., forests) then go for it. If you are in open country you might want to use 5 miles instead, just to make sure you're not counting that distant Swainson's Hawk twice. What you shouldn't do is drive 3 miles, say to yourself, "this looks terrible for birds", and then keep going to 5. If it's safe, pull off and do a count, regardless of what it looks like. What kind of count do you have to do once you get there? At "random locations" we ask that you spend at least 5 minutes counting birds and use the new protocol called "eBird Random Count". This new protocol requires date, start time, duration, number of observers, and distance traveled (can be zero!). By using this protocol we can identify the location as a random location, which will be important for analysis.

Questions?

By starting the "eBird County Birding" process you'll be helping us do more with citizen-science data. If you have questions about the process, please email us at ebird@cornell.edu.