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It is such a pleasure to introduce to you all our newest eBird Vermont Data Reviewers. Please join me in welcoming five new team members that help us keep eBird Vermont data strong.

Tom Berriman – Essex County
Richard Littauer – Addison County
Jeff MacQueen – Caledonia County
Chris Rimmer – Windsor County and Windham County
Bob Stymeist – Orleans County

All unusual observations are evaluated by eBird reviewers – birding experts who volunteer their time to manage filters, review records, and communicate with eBird users. Reviewers are selected for their expert knowledge of local birds and eBird, and ability to communicate that knowledge with others. It is very important to remember that reviewers are volunteers, and we are incredibly grateful for the hard work they do. eBird Vermont would not exist without this entire team! Learn more about eBird Vermont and the team behind the scenes.

There are over 1,800 volunteer eBird Reviewers around the world! Volunteer reviewers play an important role ensuring the eBird database remains reliable and accurate for science and conservation (learn more about the eBird review process). We are incredibly grateful to our volunteer reviewers for their dedication to eBird Vermont’s data quality.

Since eBird’s inception in 2002 followed by eBird Vermont in 2003, almost 23 million observations have been reviewed, requiring more than 190,000 hours of effort by reviewers. What does a reviewer do? eBird reviewers work to improve eBird data in three primary areas. First, they develop and manage the eBird checklist filters for a region. These filters generate a checklist of birds for a particular time and location, and determine what records get flagged for further review. Second, if an eBird participant tries to report a species that is not on the checklist, or if the number of individuals of a species exceeds the filter limit, then these records get flagged for review. Reviewers contact the observer and request further documentation. About 60% of all records that are evaluated by reviewers are validated. Finally, eBird reviewers validate whether the participant is eBirding correctly. That is, are they correctly filling out the information on when, where, and how they went birding.

Learn more about our newest reviewers

Tom Berriman – Essex County

I started birding about 30 years ago in the San Francesca, CA area. In 2002 I moved to Lyndonville, VT.  and joined the Northeast Kingdom Audubon chapter becoming a board member and eventually the president for 8 years. Over the last 20 years I was the Field Trip leader for the chapter and led almost a hundred field trips. For several years I divided my free days birding in all three counties; Orleans, Caledonia and Essex. Moose Bog at the Wenlock WMA is a favorite and the last 3 or 4 years I have been there on average 125 times each year. I think I have met birders there from almost every state and several foreign countries. Many have asked if I was ‘Tom” when we met as they said my Vermont eBird reports from the local areas were what they had consulted and relied on for their birding visits. In 2016 I wrote a field guide for Essex County birding for The Bird Observer that you may find helpful.

Richard Littauer – Addison County

I live in Montpelier, Vermont and as a linguist and tech worker by trade, I bird largely as a way to get away from my computer. I enjoy many different types of birding, from the hyperlocal logging of checklists in all weathers from city parks in Montpelier, to tracking nocturnal flight calls from migrating birds during migration season, to county quests and logging birds in all 251 towns in Vermont. Right now, I am focused on reaching an arbitrary number of lifer birds, as well as working on a book on subspecies of birds of the Northeast. I have a website where I share coding tools for birding that some of you might find useful.

Jeff MacQueen – Caledonia County
I have been birding for about 35 years, mostly in NH, but since we moved to St. Johnsbury, I have been exploring the NEK with my binoculars in hand. I spent the summers of my youth in Orange County and that was where I got hooked on birding. My “hook bird” was actually two birds, I was camping on Tucker Mountain in West Newbury in the mid-eighties and an Eastern Towhee and a Common Yellowthroat were singing in the same tree. “Drink your tea!”.. “Which-tea,which-tea, which tea?” I happened to have binoculars only because I was told there had been bears on the mountain. When I got a good look at those two birds, I was hooked and have been birding ever since. I have been on the board of the Mascoma Chapter of NH Audubon where I led bird walks and now I am running the Barnet CBC for NEK Audubon. My favorite place to bird is anywhere along the Connecticut River, but my son and I really enjoyed birding in SE Arizona this past June!

Chris Rimmer – Windsor County and Windham County
My immersion into birding was serendipitous, swift and total. During my UVM fall junior semester in 1975, I interned at Manomet Bird Observatory (now Manomet) in se. MA, not knowing a White-throated from a Song sparrow, much less a fall-plumaged Cape May from a Pine warbler. Over the next 12 weeks, banding landbirds from dawn to dusk and conducting daily censuses of migrating sea ducks, I became irreversibly hooked. I returned to UVM, immediately switched my major from Classics(!) to Wildlife Biology, and nearly flunked out that spring due to incessant birding. The rest is history, as I forged a career in ornithology, first at VINS, then at VCE, allowing me to combine my love of field birding with my scientific interest in the ecology and conservation of birds. It’s a rare day when I don’t get in at least one eBird checklist.

Bob Stymeist – Orleans County
My first visit to the Northeast Kingdom was in September 1998 to meet at that time my girlfriend’s parents in Westmore, Vermont. It was love at first sight. For several years we would come up from Boston on long weekends and an occasional week long visit. I love birds, especially song birds; this property was a passerine paradise. For the last several years my wife and I split the year almost equally in Boston and Westmore. We both enjoy exploring and discovering the great birding that the Northeast Kingdom offers. My wife and I spend most of our birding in Orleans County; I have been an eBirder since 2004 and have seen 205 species in Orleans County and 125 species on our property on Wood Warblers Way. We also visit and bird in both Essex and Caledonia Counties and for the last three years I have been the compiler of the Island Pond Christmas Bird Count.