Birding News and Features
Fill in the gaps--bird the road less traveled this January!
eBirders often email us and ask where they should go birding to make the biggest impact in regions with little data. It's perhaps little surprise that eBird checklist submissions are most dense in areas with large human populations, so getting away from those areas is a good first step for filling in the data gaps in eBird. But seeing these gaps can be really astonishing, and with the help of map wizard Paul Hurtado, we've come up with a neat way to visualize eBird data density at the county level. These maps are a visualization of the total number of eBird checklists submitted in each US county in the month of January across all years. Pull up your state map and see how your home county is faring. And better yet, find a county that's white, pink, or yellow, and go do as many eBird checklists as you can there this January!
eBird paper published in PLoS Biology
Thanks eBirders! You've done it again. Your active participation in eBird allowed us to publish a paper that highlights how eBird engages the birding community in science and conservation in one of the leading scientific journals in the world, PLoS Biology. We hope that this publication shows the ways that you (the eBird community) shape our thinking about eBird, and also demonstrates how your observations are being used by scientists and the conservation community. Because PLoS Biology is an open access journal, we encourage you to share this link and content with anyone interested in reading, reproducing, or distributing it. Feel free to translate it, post it to listservs, or put it to use in any other way. We hope you view the article here.
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!
eBirding your Christmas Bird Counts
December 14 will begin the 112th Christmas Bird Count (CBC) season, and the first big weekend of counts will be 17-18 December. The Christmas Count is the largest and longest-running ornithological citizen science project. Its data are a great complement to what we are collecting in eBird, and indeed the CBC has paved the way for eBird in many respects. It is not a problem to enter data in eBird and then submit it for the CBC too, since the two projects are collecting data in similar ways, but at different scales. eBird can be a great way to store your sector-level data and compare it from year to year.
eBird & Birds of North America Online
In appreciation for all those who have participated in the eBird effort for the past year, we are pleased to offer special discounted subscriptions to the acclaimed bird life history resource: Birds of North America Online. This comprehensive resource includes information on distribution, breeding, migration, habitats, and behavior for over 700 different species of birds that breed in Canada and the United States. The accounts include photos and audio selections for all species covered.
Year Alerts Now Available!
We are excited to announce the latest expansion of our Alerts functionality -- the long-awaited Year Alerts. eBird Alerts compare incoming eBird reports to your past submissions to notify you of birds that would be new for you. Alerts can be viewed online or set to send hourly or once-a-day emails. One of the most frequent requests from our users has been the ability to use eBird Alerts to track a year list. We listened and you can now sign up for Year Alerts. With the year drawing to a close, this is the perfect time to see if you can pick up a few new birds for your year list.
Request for Fall Sightings for North American Birds
The fall reporting season for North American Birds (NAB) has come to an end. This is a plea/request for observers to submit their interesting Texas sightings to us in preparation for the Texas portion of the report.
North American Birds is published four times a year by the American Birding Association and contains seasonal sightings/summaries for just about all regions of North America, including Canada, the US, Mexico as well as central America and some of the Caribbean islands. More information about North American Birds can be found at:
Read on for more information on reporting your Texas sightings!
Texas eBird and Exotic Birds
Entering your bird sightings in eBird is a great way to participate in bird monitoring. One often neglected group of birds are the introduced and exotic species. For conservation and planning purposes, data on introduced and exotic species should always be entered, even if the species is not included on the species list or the maps and bar charts.
Introduced and exotic birds fall into several categories. Some species have been accepted onto the Texas state list by the Texas Bird Records Committee [TBRC] as Introduced. These species include Ring-necked Pheasant, Rock Pigeon, Eurasian Collared-Dove, Monk Parakeet, Eurasian Starling and House Sparrow. For these species, their status as introduced birds is clear and they are not likely to be extirpated in the near future.
Read on for more information!
eBird update--Now embed photos in your checklists!
We are excited to report that it is now possible to embed photos within checklists! 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, this rare House Sparrow record will be easy to confirm, as well as the other rarities seen on this day: View checklist.
eBirder of the Month -- Mary Gustafson
The Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival is taking place this weekend, which means that our current November eBirder of the Month will be buzzing around Harlingen corralling teams of leaders, making sure field trips get off on time, and generally making sure that the 2011 festival comes off as another huge success. Sadly, all this means that Mary won't be getting out in the field as much as she would like. So it seems like an appropriate time to recognize her not only for her hard work as field trip chair for this festival, but also for her unflagging commitment to eBird, both as a user and a reviewer. Moreover, Mary has solidified the Rio Grande Valley Birding festival's commitment to eBird by ensuring that all field trip data are entered into the system, and that all festival participants become aware of the project. This adds up to hundreds of new eBirders each year thanks to this festival! Thanks Mary, and be sure to get out (e)Birding again when things settle down on Monday!
eBird Version 3 Launched
In the Fall of 2005 we launched eBird Version 2. Major changes to the site at that time included the addition of the 'My eBird' pages, and a redesigned 'look and feel'. We've come a long way since then! eBird Version 3 incorporates many of your ideas, and we're proud of the improvements we've made over the last few years. Your feedback has enabled us to launch eBird globally, helped us create a better and more streamlined data entry system, helped develop the fun side of birding through tools like the 'eBird Top 100', and helped us build better mapping tools that allow you to access the database in a better and more comprehensive manner. We appreciate all your participation, dedication, and support over the years, and we're happy to announce the official launch of eBird Version 3.
New and improved eBird maps
eBird has always specialized in showing bird sightings with state-of-the-art maps. As mapping services have improved, eBird has continually evolved to better serve this information. Our latest revision to the "Range and point maps" allows you to view global maps for any species or subspecies, refine the data to a specific season or date range, and then drill down to the individual sightings that make up the map. Read on for a full summary of the new functionality.
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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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).
