Birding News and Features

How Many Birds in Your Backyard? N.H. Audubon Needs Your Help on Statewide Bird Survey!

Stock up those bird feeders and dig out your binoculars for New Hampshire Audubon’s Backyard Winter Bird Survey. This annual statewide survey will take place on Saturday, February 11, and Sunday, February 12. Biologists need assistance from citizens all over the Granite State to get a clear picture of what’s really happening with our winter birds.

Birding Team to Support NHeBird and New Hampshire Bird Records

The “Twitchers in the Rye” will be taking part in the Superbowl of Birding on January 28 and spending the entire day in Rye, NH. The Superbowl is a competition that takes place on the last Saturday in January – but this Superbowl has nothing to do with football. It involves looking for as many bird species as possible in 12 hours and is run by Massachusetts Audubon’s Joppa Flats Education Center. 

“Twitchers” is Pam Hunt, Becky Suomala, Pat Myers and Andrea Robbins in 2012. Help spur them on by pledging an amount per species or per point (different species get different numbers of points) – and support the collection of bird data for conservation at the same time.

eBird Update--Now 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.

Using eBird to Find When and Where a Species Occurs

One of the powers of using eBird for data entry is that it allows for a much greater number of bird reports from all birders. The greater number of bird reports allows a better statistical analysis for ALL of New Hampshire’s birds, not just the rare birds. It also gives a better visual representation of the seasonal status and statewide distribution of species in New Hampshire. On-line, using eBird, there is a fun and informative way to look at New Hampshire’s birds.

Steve Mirick has written an informative article that shows you step-by-step how to use eBird maps and bar charts to view reported bird sightings from the entire state or a specific county or region, and how to drill down into the data to view detailed information related to a single species or a single area.

eBird & Birds of North America Online