Birding News and Features
Vermont eBird Welcomes the Vermont Audubon Chapters!
Members of the Vermont Audubon Chapters from around the state have been adding valuable data to Vermont eBird for years. Now, the chapters have given an annual combined gift to us to help keep Vermont eBird strong. It takes the entire birding community to create a robust system like eBird. Thank you so much for all you do and welcome as the newest affiliates of Vermont eBird!
New Feature: eBird State Needs Alert!
We've just launched a new tool that will help birders find new birds at the state level--the eBird State Needs Alert. By subscribing to this alert, you'll get an email alert every day highlighting the birds that have been reported in a state that you haven't seen before. This tool compares all the birds you've reported in a state with the new reports coming in, and then sends you a list of the reports for species that you have not yet personally reported to eBird. This tool will make it easier for you to keep abreast of recent records of birds you might want to see in a given state that might not necessarily be rare enough to make it to the eBird Notable Birds Google Gadget.
Records of Vermont Birds Historic Data: Help!
From 1974 until 2004, bird sightings in Vermont were collected by birders and sent to a project called Records of Vermont Birds at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science. A corps of dedicated volunteers assembled the information into a statewide summary each season that was printed and mailed to birders. All of the original records were archived in boxes for the historical record. The 30 years of data undoubtedly hold many conservation and scientific discoveries, but the lack of a computer database for retrieval of these data has proven to be a roadblock to examining them for years, not to mention the inability to save these records in event of a catastrophe such as fire or flood. The Vermont Institute of Natural Science has now joined the other
Vermont eBird affiliates. They have provided us with all of the Records
of Vermont Birds historic data to be entered into the Vermont eBird
database. We need your help!
Subscribe to New eBird Alerts!
We are very excited to introduce a new feature: eBird Alerts! By going to the eBird Alerts page from "View and Explore Data" you can view a list of all the national-level rarities recently reported in North America and Canada. These are defined by the ABA Codes, which we explain below. You have the option to subscribe hourly (!), daily, or just to visit this page and click to see the results from the past seven days. In the near future, we hope to add similar alerts for birds you "need" (i.e., birds not already on your eBird list) for a given state or province. So please, sign up for our ABA Alerts to keep up on what rarities--like Ivory Gulls--are being reported around the country!
Superbowl of Birding Vermont Youth Team
For the second year, North Branch Nature Center will be bringing a group of young birders to Cape Ann, MA for the Superbowl of Birding. We still have room for a few more members on our team! In 2009, our first bird of the day was an Eastern-screech Owl and our last was a Snowy Owl, with 57 others in between including Harlequin Duck, Black Guillemot, Lapland Longspur, and White-winged Crossbill! We even had the Boston Globe follow us for part of the afternoon. No experience is necessary and beginners are welcome. We hope you'll join us!
New iPhone App harnesses the power of eBird--Check out BirdsEye!
“BirdsEye is the best invention for birding since binoculars,” says Kenn Kaufman, renowned birder, author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America and team member of a partnership that has created BirdsEye, a new birding app for the iPhone® and iPod touch®. “It’s like having thousands of local birding experts in your pocket,” Kaufman says. The application was developed by Birds in the Hand, LLC, of Virginia, and brings together content from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and Kaufman. BirdsEye is now available on the App Store℠.
