Birding News and Features

Tallying Birds County by County: Results of the Vermont County Bird Quest 2011

The past year was an historic one for birding in Vermont. From January 1 to December 31, 2011, hundreds of birders scoured fields and fens, mountains and meadows, lakes and lawns to discover as many species as possible during a single calendar year. The Vermont 2011 County Birding Quest pitted county versus county, birder against birder — all engaged in a friendly rivalry for top honors of the highest species count. The main idea behind the year-long Quest was simply to get people out birding, promote camaraderie, and better document bird life across the state, using Vermont eBird. With nearly 18,000 eBird checklists submitted and over a half-million birds tallied, there is no doubt it was a huge success!

Vermont eBirders of the Month January 2012: The Vermont Bird Records Committee

Many countries have national bird record committees. In Europe almost every country has one. Some have committees covering more local areas. In the UK each county has its own record committee. Here in the U.S., most states have their own bird record committee and we are lucky to have one of the oldest here in Vermont. Founded in the 1970s, the Vermont Bird Records Committee (VBRC) is composed of expert birders and ornithologists from Vermont. The primary purpose is to validate records of birds from the state and maintain the Vermont State Bird List. It is our pleasure to award the Vermont Bird Records Committee, past and present members, January 2012 Vermont eBirders of the Month in recognition for all of their volunteer work past, present and future.

Better Birding: Lecture Series Begins in January

Hampered by hawks? Stumped on sparrows? Flummoxed by flycatchers? The Better Birding lecture series will solve your avian anxieties. With slides, videos, humor and exuberance, Bryan Pfeiffer from Vermont Bird Tours will offer his secrets and easygoing approaches to birdwatching enjoyment ... and enlightenment. Two workshops for beginners will be free. Co-sponsored by Vermont Center for Ecostudies and North Branch Nature Center. Learn more...

Audubon Guides Releases New Bird Guide app with eBird Integration!

Now you can carry eBird and your field guide along with all the songs and calls right in your pocket! Your birding will be more rewarding than ever!  Find and identify birds more easily with the updated Audubon Birds app. Green Mountain Digital, a Vermont company and creator of Audubon Guides mobile apps, has just released an innovative update to their Audubon Birds - A Field Guide to North American Birds that interfaces with eBird! Learn more...

Vermont County Bird Quest 2011 in the Homestretch!

Part discovery, part conservation, part contest, but mostly fun, this yearlong quest has given us all a welcome excuse to head outdoors and go birding. From the common to the rare, a diverse and fascinating array of birds have been found in Vermont so far this year. Each county is now coming down to the wire seeking to document that diversity, with the added incentive of vying for top honors of the maximum species count. And all of it is documented in Vermont eBird. Check out some of our record numbers to date...

Vermont Bird Records Committee Report 2011

The Vermont Bird Record Committee held their annual meeting late October to assess the year of hard work by the Vermont birding community and update the Vermont bird list. The committee received 54 rare, out-of-season or rare nesting reports from great birders like you. Most exciting were three new state records: Band-rumped Storm-Petrel (courtesy of Irene), Marbled Godwit, and Slaty-backed Gull.  Another 14 records were for species that have been recorded less than 10 times in Vermont! Read more...

Vermont eBird Version 3.0 Launched

In the Fall of 2005 we launched Vermont 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.

Meet the Vermont eBird Regional Editors

Did you know that every record submitted to eBird goes through the eBird data verification process? Using a combination of automated data filters and a network of local experts, eBird tackles data quality and assurance. In order for us to maintain the integrity of the database, and for it to be used fully by the science and conservation community, we as observers must fully understand and strive to reach the highest level of data quality. Therefore, we've developed procedures to facilitate communication between eBird observers, our local eBird editors, and the Vermont Bird Records Committee, including some new and improved review tools for our editors. In Vermont we have data filters for five regions and each region has a volunteer expert helping review the data as it pours in. Maybe you have heard from them already? Let's meet the Vermont eBird regional editors...

Vermont County Birding Quest Takes Flight

Ready for a birding challenge and some 'friendly' cross-county competition? Grab your binocs, shoulder your spotting scope, and join the 2011 Vermont County Birding Quest. Many Vermont counties have challenged one another to identify as many species as possible during 2011. Part fun, part discovery, part conservation, but mostly fun, this yearlong quest gives us all a welcome excuse to head outdoors and go birding. From the common to the rare, a diverse and fascinating array of birds resides in or passes through Vermont each year. These three counties now seek to document that diversity, with the added incentive of vying for top honors of the maximum species count. Vermont eBird will provide the tool for that documentation.

eBird occurrence maps

Vermont Bird Records Committee Report 2010

We would like to thank you for making 2010 an exciting year for birding in Vermont. One new species was added to the state list, Eurasian Collared Dove was found in Norwich. A Forster's Tern nesting on Lake Champlain was the first state breeding record for this species. The Vermont Bird Records Committee met in October to review all the rare bird reports submitted in the past year. Please visit http://www.vtecostudies.org/vbrc/reports.htm to view a full report of all the species that were state records.

Effort-based observations enable powerful data analysis

eBird is a true crossroads between birding and science. As we develop eBird, we're continually walking the line between building better tools that birders want to use, while maintaining our focus on collecting useful scientific data in the process. The truth is, every piece of data submitted to eBird is valuable--from single records of a bird in space and time (Incidental Observations), to complete checklists with associated effort information. But there are differences between the levels of analysis we can perform using the effort-based observations versus incidental observations. As eBirders, we're always interested in how to make the most out of our data, and in this article we'll explore some of the reasons why recording effort can make a big difference when it comes to data analysis.

2010 Loon Summary

A record 72 loon pairs attempted to nest with 57 of them being successful in Vermont in 2010. About 70 or 71 loon chicks survived through August (we’re still confirming a few). In contrast to a decade ago, 38 pairs attempted to nest and 44 chicks survived in 2000. Over 300 volunteers helped track Vermont’s loons this summer.

eBird gets a supercomputing kick from TeraGrid

Thanks to your continued participation the data analysis potential of eBird is growing rapidly. Through collaboration with partners in the DataONE network at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, eBird was recently awarded 100,000 hours of supercomputing time on the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid system. This powerful computer system will help Lab scientists and colleagues model bird migration phenology at the population level based on eBird data. The process will involve combining bird observations with remotely sensed variables such as landcover and greening index to predict bird movements and to explore how migration timing might change under different climate scenarios. This exciting story was recently profiled in Nature.

eBird Patterns: Eastern Phoebe Migration

The previous “Patterns from eBird” featured animated maps of Northern Cardinal based on predictive modeling. This time we’ll take a look at how these maps predict migration in Eastern Phoebe, a widespread eastern species. Eastern Phoebe is the hardiest flycatcher in the United States and Canada, and in some areas it returns to the breeding grounds more than a month earlier than any other flycatcher. Its wintering range is largely within the United States, so these animated maps reveal its entire annual cycle.

Saving a Rare Songbird – Hemispheric Conservation Plan for Bicknell’s Thrush Released

An international conservation group today unveiled a plan to protect one of North America’s most rare and vulnerable songbirds, the Bicknell’s thrush, across its entire range from Canada to the Caribbean.

The International Bicknell’s Thrush Conservation Group (IBTCG), an alliance of scientists, conservationists and governments, proposes to increase the global population of Bicknell’s thrush by 25 percent over the next 50 years, mostly by preventing further loss of its breeding and wintering habitats.

New App Developed in Vermont has High Hopes of Helping Haiti

The vibrant painting of Haiti’s national bird, the Hispaniolan Trogon, glowing on the iPhone screen and its “cock-crow” call rolling from the speaker offer a stark contrast to the aftermath of January’s disastrous earthquake in Haiti. But the partners that joined together to create The Birds of Haiti and the Dominican Republic iPhone and iPod Touch application hope that a bit of avian beauty will raise much-needed funds for humanitarian aid in Haiti.

“With nearly 100 million birders in North America alone, we hope this will be a way for all of us to easily contribute to Haitian earthquake relief efforts and learn about the island’s amazing birdlife at the same time,” said Vermont Center for Ecostudies biologist Kent McFarland, who hatched the idea.

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!