We are thrilled to congratulate Robert Sams, of Findlay, Ohio, as the winner of the March eBirder of the Month Challenge, sponsored by Carl Zeiss Sports Optic. Robert submitted checklists from exactly 20 hotspots this month, including checklists from his home state of Ohio (here’s a nice example) as well as from hotspots he visited while traveling in San Francisco, California, and points north (such as this one). When we notified Robert of the win, he replied with a note saying “As my several previous NCAA bracket entries can attest to, I never win anything.” We are pleased to report that even if March Madness didn’t bring him much luck, his commitment to eBird has now been rewarded. Robert will receive a new ZEISS Conquest HD 8×42 binocular and a selection of books from Princeton University Press.
For your chance to win, be sure to check out the April eBirder of the month challenge and watch for the May challenge to be posted on the eBird homepage on 1 May.
As with all the winners thus far, Robert’s name was drawn randomly from among participants that met this month’s challenge. And as with the two winners before him, we were very impressed with how Robert has made eBird a part of weekly birding routine and how he is using it in the best possible way, submitting complete, effort-based checklists regularly, being conservative in his reporting, and providing documentary notes for species that are flagged for confirmation.
The March eBirder of the Month Challenge provided an opportunity to highlight eBird hotspots and the eBird Hotspot Explorer. The eBird Hotspot Explorer was released last fall as way to more easily explore the rich information on publicly-accessible birding locales. The Hotspot Explorer map gives an easy-to-use search bar (at top left) where you can type the name of a hotspot, as well as a Location search box where you can type any city, county, state, or country to quickly zoom in on a particular area. The base map shows species diversity, and allows you to zoom in or customize the date range to determine the areas with the richest species diversity or the areas with the least eBird coverage, so you can target areas where your contributions will be most valuable. Read more about the eBird Hotspot Explorer in our introductory story from fall 2013.
Most importantly, eBird hotspots allow for data to be aggregated so it can easily be explored at a single page in eBird. Whenever a hotspot exists, we encourage you to use the hotspot for your submissions. Each hotspot page summarizes the full suite of information available for a hotspot. At the bottom of this story we list the 20 hotspots that Robert submitted from in March, and exploring those is a fascinating walk through a variety of top birding areas across the country. It is great to live vicariously through the great birding spots that Robert visited last month.
We asked Robert to tell us a bit more about himself and how he uses eBird. This is what he wrote:
“I started using eBird several years ago as a way to reduce my boxes of bird notes that I had laying around. It is when I started using the various Explore Data features that I became hooked. There is seemingly no limit to ways one can view data on species, abundance, range, migration timing, etc.
What I have personally found, however, is that one of my favorite way to use eBird data is to get a feel for the birding activity in an area. Coming from a county (Hancock, Ohio) with a relatively small and rather close-knit birding community, I have been surprised from looking through eBird data by how many other birdwatchers and passing-through birders were active in this area that were completely unknown to our group.
The internet has dramatically changed how we can report, share, and study birds. I have found eBird to be an essential tool to this end, but other sources are indispensable, too. For me, resources such as eBird, the Ohio Birds Listserv, Facebook’s Birding Ohio, and various groups’ sites like the Black Swamp Bird Observatory have changed the time delay for rare bird reports, for example, from days just 30 years ago, to hours or minutes.
In the end, birding is best when it is shared. eBird has proven to be an ideal tool to help do just that.”
Robert wrapped up by providing a photo, which apparently required a special birding trip to acquire:
“I discovered I did not have any pictures of myself in any way connected to birding, so several of us went out birding. The pic was taken seconds after we got some killer views of a FOS (First-of-spring) Yellow-throated Warbler.”
Thanks to Robert for sharing his birding, in Ohio and beyond, through eBird. And please join us in congratulating Robert again for being selected as our eBirder of the Month for March.
Here are the twenty hotspots that Robert visited:
- Pier 39 (1 checklist)
- Veterans Memorial Lake (1 checklist)
- Findlay Reservoirs (5 checklists)
- Oakwoods Nature Preserve (8 checklists)
- Golden Gate Bridge–Toll Plaza Gardens (1 checklist)
- North Baltimore Reservoir (1 checklist)
- Golden Gate Park–San Francisco Botanical Garden (1 checklist)
- Springville Marsh State Nature Preserve (1 checklist)
- Litzenberg Memorial Woods–North (1 checklist)
- Brisbane Lagoon (1 checklist)
- San Francisco Zoo (1 checklist)
- Fort Baker (1 checklist)
- Muir Woods NM (2 checklists)
- Disneyland (1 checklist)
- Golden Gate Park (1 checklist)
- Lake Mosier (1 checklist)
- Riverbend Recreation Area (3 checklists)
- Wyandot Wildlife Area (1 checklist)
- Alamo Square (1 checklist)
- Litzenberg Memorial Woods–South (1 checklist)