Birding News and Features
NH eBird – Entering Rare Sightings
NH eBird has a system that automatically “flags” unusual reports for independent review. You will know if a sighting is unusual and has been flagged because you’ll be asked to confirm it after you’ve entered it.
If you enter a rare species, or if you enter an unusually high count of a more common species, the report will be “flagged” for review. The New Hampshire Bird Records Season Editors review all of the flagged reports.
Adding details to your rare sightings is a vital contribution you can make to the long term record of birds in New Hampshire.
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
For those who would like to sign-up for a full subscription or to renew a current subscription, BNA Online is now available at the discounted rate of $25 for a 1 year subscription or $50 for a 2 year subscription.
eBird Rare Bird Alerts are here!
After releasing Year Alerts last week, we are happy to announce another exciting Alert option -- the eBird Rare Bird Alert. This alert basically takes the eBird Notable Birds Google Gadget and moves it into an eBird Alert environment, meaning that you can now receive hourly or daily email summaries, or just go view rare birds on the web at our eBird alerts page. One key update is the addition of counties to the available alert regions, meaning you can customize your rare bird alert experience more than ever. The new Rare Bird Alert notifies you about any unusual bird that has been reported in your region of interest, and provides a link to the location and to the checklist so you can get more information about the sighting, and make the critical call as to whether it's worth calling in sick to work!
New eBird Features
eBird has many great features and they keep adding more! Did you know that you can get an e-mail alerting you when a bird has been reported in a state that you haven't seen before? Or that eBird is on facebook and twitter? There's even an iPhone app that allows you to find nearby birds, view birding hotspots, and record your life list, among other things. There's even an eBird Google Gadget (experienced eBird users will already be quite familiar with this) and a way to share your photos on Flickr. Especially for new eBird users, here's a brief overview of some of the hi-tech ways to use and explore eBird. Check the eBird home page (www.ebird.org) for more stories.
Introducing New Hampshire eBird
New Hampshire Audubon and New Hampshire Bird Records (NHBR) have teamed up to collaborate with eBird and are excited to announce the release of New Hampshire eBird, an eBird portal specifically tailored to the Granite State. Not only does this website provide a version of eBird with a New Hampshire focus, but it will also help to revise and improve the reporting framework for New Hampshire Bird Records. From now on, reporting to New Hampshire eBird will be all you need to do to make sure your sightings are available for publication in NHBR, as well as a wide range of other uses.
Report your fall sightings to New Hampshire Bird Records
And do it through New Hampshire eBird! With the release of New Hampshire eBird, the editors of New Hampshire Bird Records (NHBR) will now be harvesting your data directly from eBird. No need to spend days digging through notebooks or to send us spreadsheets--we'll be watching your submissions and pulling out your most interesting sightings. We do still ask you to document your rarities for us. We may be contacting you for documentation throughout the season or at the end as we work on the New Hampshire Bird Records summary. And for those that need some time to ramp up to using eBird, or that live in areas without fast internet connections, we are working to set up a process for NHBR to upload them on your behalf--look for more information to come.
Have You Seen a Rare Bird? – Be sure to document it!
Rare birds are fun and exciting to see, but they can also be valuable to our knowledge of species occurrence and distribution if they are well documented. The best documentation provides enough details that someone looking at the sighting 50 years from now will be confident of the identification. New Hampshire Bird Records (NHBR) collects and archives bird sighting documentation and the New Hampshire Rare Birds Committee (NHRBC) reviews the sightings. All eBird data is reviewed and there may be times when someone, such as the NHBR Season Editor, asks you for documentation or more details on a specific sighting. Don’t be alarmed or offended – they are looking after the quality of data that will be used for many, many years to come.
Location! Location! Location!
Exactly where you plot your birding locations on the map is critical for eBird in many ways. When you are specific with your location information we can perform better analyses, and we can ensure that your birding lists are built correctly. eBird thrives on location specificity, and a good general rule of thumb when entering data is that it's always better to enter shorter checklists from more refined locations than longer checklists from a string of unrelated locations. In this article we'll discuss why being as precise as possible with your birding locations yields the best results.
What in the world is "Herring Gull (American)"?
Most species names in eBird are easily found with a glance at your field guide, but eBird also allows entry of a number of other birds (sometimes we call them 'taxa') whose names do not appear in any guides. These break down into three main groups: hybrids, spuhs, and subspecies groups. Hybrids all have the word "hybrid" in the name (e.g., Mallard x Gadwall (hybrid)) and all spuhs either have a "sp." (e.g., scoter sp.) or slash (e.g., Greater/Lesser Scaup) in the name. The subspecies groups, such as "Herring Gull (American)", are more complicated and explained in this article.
Using the eBird Comments Fields
eBird has two comments fields that can be used however you choose. While birders sometimes leave these fields blank, entering submission notes can help make your checklist more valuable. Your comments can assist our eBird reviewers as they try to assess records of rare and unusual birds. By supplying some extra information in your comments you can make your records easier to interpret and make the review process faster. Your eBird data (including comments fields) are also shared with editors of local and regional bird journals, authors of articles and books on bird distribution, state wildlife agencies, and conservationists.
Western hummingbirds in the East--set your feeders out!!
Make Your Checklists More Meaningful!
As the eBird database grows by leaps and bounds, it is becoming ever more valuable. Your observations are making a huge difference in our understanding of birds at many levels. Our scientists are now analyzing your data to find new patterns in bird distribution, abundance and population trends. Although every record submitted to eBird is valuable, only observations with effort can be used in these more rigorous analyses, so we would like to promote several bird survey techniques that we consider most valuable in this regard. Make the most of your birding by conducting traveling counts, stationary counts and area counts in a more meaningful way. In this feature we'll give examples of how to make your observations count for bird conservation!
Are you really making Casual Observations?
We've noticed at eBird that many observers are choosing the "Casual Observation" methodology when in fact they are actually conducting more rigorous types of surveys while birding. Casual Observations are of limited value because there is little effort information required, which allows them to be used in fewer analyses because we know less about how you went birding. It's important to let us know what kind of effort you put into making your observations. Please read on for a better understanding of the eBird methodology choices, and to learn how to make your data most valuable.
Bird Counting 201
In this second installment of our series on counting birds we'll discuss some approaches to counting more problematic groups of birds including large numbers, moving flocks, and mixed species flocks. How do the hawk counters do it? How should you count that constant stream of Cormorants passing your local headland? How do you go about picking out different species in large flocks of birds. "Birds of a feather flock together!" Well, sometimes, but more often than not we're presented with heterogeneous flocks of birds comprised of many different species. Learning how to look at species ratios within flocks is important, and developing an eye for picking out what is different will help you find that proverbial needle in the haystack that we're all hoping for--a rarity. Armed with the tips in this column we hope you'll improve your ability and begin to enjoy counting birds.
Bird Counting 101
At eBird we encourage you to make your best estimate of bird numbers on every checklist. Your best estimate of numbers is always more useful than putting an "X' to indicate presence. An "X' could be one or it could be a thousand! We can always simplify numbers back to presence/absence for analysis. Your estimates of numbers help us judge relative abundance, and are an important part of checklist data. So what do you do if you're having trouble counting birds? Large flocks of birds are always challenging, and in this article we'll talk about some techniques for estimating numbers so that you can practice and become more proficient at counting birds. This will be the first in a series of articles discussing techniques for counting birds.
