Birding News and Features

NH Audubon’s Annual Birdathon Begins Saturday, May 19

NH Audubon’s Annual Birdathon will be held on Saturday, May 19 and the morning of Sunday, May 20th, with a potluck dinner and awards ceremony – complete with exciting prizes – to follow Sunday at 5 pm at the McLane Center in Concord. 

The Birdathon is NH’s biggest day of birding. Its goals are to celebrate the rich diversity of the state’s migratory and breeding birds (202 species were tallied at last year's event!), bring together NH's birding community and support NH Audubon's regional Chapters and wildlife sanctuaries. 

Teams of birders will try to see as many species of birds as possible within a given time period of a single day in whatever location they choose. Historically, some teams have traveled the state by car for 24 hours straight in search of the coveted ‘Big Day’ record of 170 species. Typically, though, birders cover their favorite local park or NH Audubon sanctuary for a leisurely morning, or travel (even by bike) around parts of their entire town or county looking to best last year’s totals. We’ll even welcome observations from your own backyard!

Birds of Spring: Tales of Caution and the Top 5 Most Misidentified

The following was written by Marshall Iliff originally for Massachusetts. It is still very relevant for New Hampshire and readers will find it very informative.

As we all know by now, we are experiencing a record-breaking spring. 2012 has been perhaps the warmest spring and winter on record, we are now seeing a record-early spring arrival for many species. Although arrival dates for migrants have been kept for many years, these have done a good job documenting just the endpoints of migration...not the whole bell curve. eBird, for the first time is now documenting the entire arc of migration, so I'd like to personally thank everyone who is reporting to eBird and providing such valuable information to actually quantify how exceptionally early this year's arrival dates are.

As just one example of this full illustration of migration, and a very simple one, look at this eBird graph for Eastern Phoebe (showing 2012 in progress compared to 2011 and 2010). It shows not just when the first phoebes are reported, but when they reach their peak occurrence and when they become widely reported enough to be considered "arrived" (maybe 10-20% of their max frequency, for example, where the bell curve gets steep). You can do these graphs for any year, and only 2010 even comes close to this year's arrival curve for Eastern Phoebe, which is shifted a full 2 weeks early! Note that the frequency peak (i.e., % of checklists with phoebe) that was reached during the week of 15-21 March 2012 was not reached until 8-15 April in 2011!

New Hampshire Bird Records Summer 2011 Issue is Out!

The Summer 2011 issue of New Hampshire Bird Records has just been mailed to subscribers. 

This issue is dedicated to Rosalind “Rozzie” Holt in appreciation of her legacy gift to New Hampshire Audubon. Rozzie’s bird reports came primarily from Star Island and she became a stalwart volunteer at the bird banding station on Appledore Island.

Here’s what you’ll find in the Summer 2011 issue.

• Summer Season: June 1 through July 31, 2011 by Tony Vazzano
• Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks in New Hampshire by Stephen R. Mirick
• New Hampshire’s 2011 Breeding Bald Eagles by Chris Martin
• Birding Freedom Town Forest by Andrea and George Robbins
• Field Notes compiled by R.A. Quinn
• • A Roseate Tern Banded in the United Kingdom Visits New Hampshire by Robert A. Quinn
  • The “Runt” of the Litter Proves his Genes are Strong by Chris Martin
  • An American Kestral Banded in Maryland Nests in Manchester by Iain MacLeod
• Photo Gallery – Common Nighthawk Nests in 2011 by Rebecca Suomala and Jane Kolias. Click here to read the article.
• Volunteers and Research – Gulls, Gulls, Gulls…They’re Everywhere by L. William Clark. Click here to read the article.
• NHBirds E-mail List by Stephen R. Mirick
• A Shrub Full of Warblers and Other Taxonomic Stories by Pamela Hunt
• Photo Quiz by David B. Donsker

New BirdLog app finally provides easy mobile data entry!

We are thrilled to report the release of the new BirdsEye BirdLog app for the iPhone and Android smartphones (coming soon for the iPad), which for the first time allows quick-and-easy data entry directly from the field. Almost since the inception of eBird, we have longed for the ability to easily record and submit bird observations in a single step while birding in the field. BirdLog promises to transform eBirding, replacing the field notebook with an integrated, simple process for tallying birds and submitting directly to the eBird database. The use of the phone's GPS makes it simple to provide precise locations, and other automated checks ensure continuing high data quality standards and actually make it easier to submit highly accurate data to eBird. Species can be entered by scrolling a list, typing the bird name, or using the four-letter code and can be tallied as you go for more accurate counting. This is a transformative moment for eBird since BirdLog makes recording eBird checklists easier and more accurate, all at the same time.

Birds and Early Spring

by Pam Hunt,
Senior NH Audubon Biologist

The mild winter and unseasonably warm spring have many people wondering about the effects of this weather on New Hampshire's birds.

With respect to the mild winter, data from all over New England showed higher numbers for many species which normally spend the winter much farther south (e.g., New Jersey or beyond). An extreme case was a Cape May Warbler - a tiny songbird that normally winters in the Caribbean - that spent the entire winter at Odiorne Point State Park in Rye. Here it fed on abundant flies in washed up seaweed, but in a normal winter this resource might not have been available and the bird would have succumbed to the elements.