Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 18:39:31 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Frank Powers Subject: Fw: Counting crows and tracking hummingbirds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Given all the discussion on the list recently about crows crashing and hummers visiting, I thought this email might be of interest. It's from my nephew working with eBird at the Cornell.Lab of Ornithology. He is almost getting persuasive enough for me to start posting my MD & DC sightings on eBird (he's already gotten me to post sightings from WV & NC). I've found eBird to be an exciting concept that might contribute toward greater understanding of how the lady hummers at the Smithsonian got where they are, when they did. One aspect I particularly appreciate is that the folks at eBird are very willing to listen to suggestions and ideas from birders interested in expanding the knowledge that can be gained through eBird. If you haven't visited their site, give it a whirl. Good birding, Frank Powers Glen Echo, MD Montgomery County frankpowers@comcast.net > Hi Frank, > > I've been following the hummingbird discussion on MDOsprey with > interest, congrats on being able to see both birds! Happily, ever > since the brief discussion about eBird on MDOsprey I've been contacted > by several Maryland birders offering wonderful suggestions for the > site and project. I've also > noticed a bump in participation from MD, I hope the local birding community > is finding eBird useful, or at least how valuable eBird eventually > will be > *with* the participation of Maryland birders. > > eBird would help provide additional information to foster discussion > on a couple of recent threads. For example, I hope the students > interested in finding out if there was evidence of crows declining in > Maryland found out about eBird (I forwarded a note). Their > observation got me interested, so I used eBird to create a summary of > observations submitted from Maryland for the past year (November 2002 > - November 2003). > > The summary shows that in November 2002 almost 60% of the checklists > included American Crow, but in November 2003 only some 28% of > checklists reported them - 50% fewer Maryland checklists reported > American Crow than one year ago! The average group size was also > down: in November 2002, 35 crows was the average, but last month the > average group size had dropped to > 23 birds. > > That's certainly not to say crow populations are crashing, it will > take many more checklists from many more birders to make any bold > statements. Right now there are only a few dozen submitted checklists > per month from Maryland, not the hundreds (or even thousands) per > month that will illuminate trends more clearly and reliably. But this > evidence of a decline warrants keeping an eye on crow sightings and > numbers. It will be interesting to see if the Christmas Bird Count > data show a similar trend for the same time period. > > And hummingbirds: how and why western-breeding hummingbirds wind up > on the > east coast is a fascinating topic. As reports of these birds continue from > across the region and through the years it will be possible to unravel > the proximate trends and patterns in their movements, and try to > determine the ultimate causes of these movements (bad migration > skills? brains wired wrong? normal dispersal patterns to colonize new > areas? a weather event pushing them where they've never been before? > global warming? el Nino? have they been here all along and we're > just now noticing? etc etc). > > By contributing observations to eBird, all birders literally put their > sightings on the map, which are available to help discover where > hummingbirds are over wintering, how this range is changing through > the years, if certain locations consistently attract the same species, > when the > birds show up and when they leave, if they are surviving through the > winter, etc. There needs to be many more hummingbird entries before > that happens, though. I hope you'll submit your trips to see the > Black-chinned and Rufous visitors! > > Good birding! > Mike > > Michael Powers > eBird Project Leader > > Cornell Lab of Ornithology > 159 Sapsucker Woods Road > Ithaca, NY 14850 > > (607) 254-2106 (phone) > (607) 254-2111 (fax) > http://www.birdsource.org/ebird > ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================