Use eBird to Track Migration Hotspots

The hope of finding a rarity might bring you there, but you find much more.  The great stopover places are good for the rarities and also for the regulars that you might expect but if were absent you would miss.   These common and regular species may need particular spots for critical resting or feeding.   Pennsylvania may have the equivalent of Delaware Bay for shorebirds obscured in the blur of bird reports.   All of it is good. 

Birders just go birding where they think they can find the most birds or at least the ones they want to find.   This leads to many good days afield, but it also can lead to some important answers to  bird conservation.   It leads them to concentration areas on the migrant bird highway.  The great migration of birds from North America down to Latin America and back involves millions of birds in one of the greatest natural shows on Earth.

Which are the most critical stopover locations in the state for birds that are declining?   Now is the time to find out before they are lost or change enough that they no longer offer what it takes to support them in the future.    There are many threats to these migrant stopovers.  By knowing what places are most important to birds, we can place our resources at the most critical places and plan conservation accordingly.

A forested state like Pennsylvania may serve as a critical stopover for the huge populations of boreal birds taking flight to the Canadian taiga and tundra far to the North.   The harriers seen flying over a meadow, the White-throated Sparrows lisping “Oh Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada!” in the bush, and the Blackpoll Warblers flitting in tall trees along a river all are headed much farther north, but need spots here to claim some grub and some sleep. 

Each migrant stopover has a different suite of resources to offer birds.   They have been characterized as being either “full-service hotels,” “convenience stores” or “fire escapes” for hungry, tired birds looking for a place to stay.   Our larger blocks of bird habitat with rich variety of vegetation, water, and safe cover are the “full-service hotels” that birds really need for a satisfactory stay in Pennsylvania on their long trek north.  Some of our small woodlots and fields in suburbia may attract a lot of birds and birders, but are only “convenience stores” or “fire escapes” when birds need much more. 

One of the next frontiers in bird conservation is better understanding of which sites are the ones that count the most.   Each one of us is not in enough places at once to figure this out.  It must be a team effort, or at least a collaborative one.   No one can do it alone.  

A possible solution, and a fun one, is to log your migration season into eBird.   Each field trip adds to the common pool of information.   Who knows what we will find out together?   I think we will find out a lot more than we can ever imagine.  

Although there are hundreds of ways to enjoy birds, there are four basic methods to report birds on eBird, each with a different set of required fields. You will see why we advise you to take observations in certain ways.  The four observation types vary in the amount of effort that you used to make your birding observations.

Casual Sightings do not require any measure of time spent, distance traveled, or area searched. Casual Sightings simply denote that a given species was present at a particular location on a certain date. Examples include entering an oriole that flies by while you are checking your mail, or the hummingbird feeding at your backyard feeder while you wash the dishes, or the Red-tailed Hawk seen perched in a tree on your drive to work, or the flock of waxwings moving through your yard as you weed the garden.

Stationary Counts are made over a known period of time, but don't include any measure of distance traveled or area searched. Examples include a hawk migration watch, lake watch, or sitting on your deck for a known period of time while identifying birds. Stationary Counts can be made while birding from your car if you record the time you spent and species you identified at each stop along your journey. Individual stops are then submitted as Stationary Counts.

Traveling Counts are made when traveling a known distance and period of time while walking or using a horse, car, boat, or some other transportation. Examples include walking a trail through a park or state forest, driving an auto loop at a National Wildlife Refuge, or participating in a river birding trip by boat.

Exhaustive Area Counts are made while thoroughly searching a given location or area. These counts are sometimes used by biologists when monitoring a specific site, but they can be appropriate for casual birding if you are able to estimate the size (acres or hectares) of the area you searched. Examples include actively searching a local park or woodlot for breeding birds or canoeing back and forth through a marsh to count wading birds. A birding trek around your neighborhood or private property can be an Exhaustive Area Count if you are able to estimate the size of the area you searched.

We highly recommend that your observation be compiled as either Traveling Counts or Exhaustive Area Counts whenever possible.  Perhaps a group of you and your birding friends or club can tackle the whole spot as an area count.  The migration season is particularly good to make tallies of each species so the value of the location for  specific species conservation can be better understood.   It just is not that they were found, but how many.  

Many of the good birding spots are Pennsylvania Important Bird Areas visit the Pennsylvania Audubon website.   Several great stopover locations on Pennsylvania Game Lands.  For more information about these game lands, visit the Game Commission website.

For more information about boreal songbirds, visit the Boreal Songbird Initiative.