Please join us in congratulating Juli deGrummond of Tallahassee, Florida – winner of the August 2022 eBird Challenge, sponsored by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics. Juli’s name was drawn randomly from the 3,245 eBirders who submitted at least 20 eligible shared checklists in August. Juli will receive a new ZEISS Conquest HD 8×42 binocular for her eBirding efforts. Here’s Juli’s birding story:
I have been a birder pretty much all of my life! I can remember as a young kid reading in Ranger Rick magazine about bluebird trails and seeing the fantastically blue birds and dreaming of seeing one, which finally first happened when I was 18 years old. I spent my youth reading about or out in nature every moment that I could. I recall lying on the ground and watching the Red-tailed Hawks soaring in the sky as I made mental note of their red tails, walking out in fields and having Northern Bobwhite burst up in front of me like thunder, and even climbing trees to look in nests to see eggs and young. I have gone through various levels of birding as I have gone through the stages of life. Going into my late teens I became a lister but not a very organized one and that is the way my bird life continued until eBird. When I took a birding trip to Belize in March of 2020, just as Covid was ramping up in the United States, my guide, Francis Canto Jr (a past eBirder of the month) Introduced me to eBird. I have never looked back. The only day I have missed since making my eBird account is the day I left Belize and flew home. When I got back to Florida I immediately downloaded eBird on my phone and now it is just a daily part of my life.
Eastern Bluebird © Juli deGrummond / Macaulay Library
In the past I kept my lists and birding information in birding journals. Now eBird primarily fills that niche for me. It keeps my lists organized and keeps count of my numbers for me. Each checklist also represents a memory. I love the way I can share my checklists with my friends and we can each add photos and sound recordings. Speaking of friends, another way that eBird has changed my life is all the friends and connections I have made through eBird. I now have an extensive group of friends that are as devoted to birding as I am. Without eBird the only birding friend I would have would be my 10-year-old nephew, Lorenzo Colantoni, who is a passionate young birder whom I get visit in New York and bird with a couple of times each year.
eBird is great for researching areas I am planning to travel to. I can look up the rare birds that have been seen in the past seven days, see what the top hotspots are, or just look to see what is being seen on checklists in the area that I am planning to visit. I use it every time I travel. I also really love the new trip reports feature and look forward to using it for Christmas Bird Counts, as well as, future travels.
American Flamingo © Juli deGrummond
eBird puts great information about all the species of birds at our fingertips. I love the bar chart feature. The data available on eBird has really changed how I bird and helped me find more birds. It has made me aware of local hotspots that I never knew existed. I keep a close eye on the rare bird alerts, particularly in my county. I have really grown to love county birding. Without eBird it would have never occurred to me to count the birds in a specific county. It has really provides me a fun challenge that amounts to me having more knowledge about my own area and the birds that I can find here. I love the citizen science aspect of eBird as well. I care very much about being a conscientious lister and do my very best to contribute meaningful information. I love when I can contribute a rare sighting, like the day my husband and I, and our best birding buddy, Anthony Lee saw two flamingoes in one day at two different locations! eBird really gives me so much and I do my best to give back by providing accurate, well-documented information. It is me and eBird for the long haul!