MDOsprey,

 

CBC season starts tomorrow, and despite the poor weather forecast, I hope
many of you are able to get out and participate in the counts. 

 

For those of you that use eBird (and for those that don't), I wanted to send
a quick note about the two programs. YOU CAN ENTER DATA IN BOTH! The
Christmas Bird Counts have been running for over 100 years and provide
perhaps the longest and largest citizen-science effort ever. Much of the
best evidence for the status of winter bird populations in North America
comes from these counts and is thanks to the participation of up to 50,000
birders annually. eBird (www.ebird.org) hopes to develop a similar pool of
participants and is running a complementary effort that is already becoming
a sort of "year-round" CBC effort. Like the CBC, it depends on participation
from volunteers.   

 

Participation in a CBC and eBird are not mutually exclusive, and in fact,
the two go hand-in-hand. Please do not hesitate to submit your CBC list in
both places! In fact, by entering your day's list in eBird you provide an
additional level of detail that would otherwise be lost. Christmas Bird
Counts collect data from numerous "areas" or "parties", and then merge the
data to give a count of the birds reported for the entire CBC circle (15
mile diameter). However, the information about WHERE the birds are occurring
within the circle is then lost. If you enter the list for your area as an
area search in eBird, the information will also be preserved at the finer
geographic scale in the eBird database. This will help to tease out facts
like that 31 of the Ocean City CBC Great Cormorants came from Boston Harbor,
but one seen flying over the Pocomoke River (where it would be really rare)
is shown also. 

 

These data are then shared at season's end with the Regional Editors for
North American Birds, Bird Observer, etc.-so you don't have to report your
noteworthy sightings yet again!

 

If the compiler doesn't have an official form that s/he asks you to use,
then, by emailing the list to yourself, you can report the list to the
compiler without added effort of copying lists over for your personal notes
and for the "official submission".

 

Best,

 

Marshall

 

PS - REALLY ambitious eBirders may want to keep their day list by individual
sites within their CBC area. We fully encourage this (the smaller the scale,
and the greater number of lists submitted, the better). However, remember to
count birds seen while traveling between points for your CBC tally as well!

 

PPS - feel free to contact me with any eBird-related questions

 

-- 

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Marshall J. Iliff
West Roxbury, MA
miliff AT aol.com
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eBird/AKN Project Leader
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
159 Sapsucker Woods Rd.
Ithaca, NY 14850
http://www.ebird.org
http://www.avianknowledge.net
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