Birding News and Features

eBirders and Texas Century Club

If you are eBirding in Texas, consider joining Texas Ornithological Society's Century Club. TOS has a webpage for each of Texas' 254 Counties listing the top ten listers and all with more than 100 species in at least one Texas county. eBird hotspots are also shown for many counties.

The goal is to get more eBird observation data from the many parts of Texas that are currently under-birded

All you need to do is find at least 100 species in one county in Texas and enter them into eBird. Then go to my eBird tab and copy the "My County Lists" page into an e-mail and send it to one of the TOS Century Club Administrators (whose contact info is at the bottom of each county page)

Click on "eBirders and Texas Century Club" Link for more details

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Enter "Winter Season" sightings by 8 March

When you submit your sightings to eBird, we make those observations available to researchers, conservationists, and others with an interest in birds. We also provide these records to the authors of North American Birds and regional journals focused on bird distribution. At the end of each season, records for each state are made available for download for authors and editors of these publications. All you need to do to have your winter records (1 December 2008 - 28 February 2009) included is submit them to eBird prior to the 8th of March.

Many New Ebird Features Added

1) eBird Checklist Sharing

2) Determining when and where a species was last seen in a county or at a hotspot

3) Photo Uploads

4) Users may Merge personal locations with shared Hotspots

5) Over 1,000 ebird hotspots in Texas submitted by users and over 20,000 hotspots submitted overall

Post-Ike Upper Texas Coast Birding Update

The Inspiration of Louis Agassiz Fuertes

A few months ago my friend Randy Pinkston wrote a short note on Texbirds that talked about the art of Louis Agassiz Fuertes and his relationship to Texas. I too have seen many of the old photos from the Oberholser/Fuertes 1901 Trans-Pecos journey, and I marvel at how much they accomplished in such difficult surroundings. How they would have marveled at the worst of our challenges being whether or not we might need a four-wheel drive SUV to carry us to the upper reaches of Pine Canyon! Thank goodness that Fuertes lives on in the Fuertes Red-tailed Hawks that so commonly winter here (as well as his art that illustrates Oberholser's Birdlife of Texas).