This month’s eBirder of the month challenge, sponsored by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics, focuses on counting. Everytime you go eBirding, there is some counting involved. Whether that is counting the number of species that you see, or the number of individuals of each species—you’re already doing it. The goal of the challenge this month is to make your sightings count…by counting the birds you see! Avoiding the use of “X” in your checklist (where “X” means “present”), makes your sightings much more valuable for science and conservation. The eBirder of the month will be drawn from eBirders who submit at least 31 complete checklists not containing an “X” during October. That is an average of one checklist a day—and all you have to do is count! Winners will be notified by the 10th of the following month.
A couple years ago we published the Counting 101 and Counting 201 articles, tutorials for how to more effectively and accurately count birds that you’re seeing. Counting 101 focuses on the basics—how to keep track of birds throughout a birding outing, and how to count a flock in parts to estimate the total. Counting 201 takes this a step further, dealing with large numbers and flocks of birds in motion. Counting 102 is intended to take these counting best practices and apply them to feeder birding—a slightly different counting problem, but an important one to address. For anyone who has wondered how best to count and eBird the birds visiting you feeder—this article is for you.
We are excited to announce the launch of eBird Brasil—a regional eBird portal for birders across Brazil. eBird Brasil is run by a team of collaborators that include SAVE Brasil, Instituto Butantan, and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. We are very excited to work with these great organizations and establishments to expand the use of eBird in Brazil. Since the Global Big Day this past spring, eBirding has taken off in Brazil like never before. Brazilian birders were so engaged in the Global Big Day totals, and the competition for the most species seen worldwide on May 9th, that one Brazilian eBirder stated: “This is like watching a World Cup match!” We can think of no higher praise. In fact, the Global Big Day was such a hit that SAVE Brasil has organized the Big Day Brasil Primavera 2015.
We’re thrilled to announce a new collaboration with the Macaulay Library that will enable you to add photos and sounds directly to your eBird checklists. Each piece of media you upload will become a digitally archived specimen. This collaboration will build an archive of media associated with complete checklists of bird observations from around the world. With tens of thousands of eBirders across the globe contributing media, the potential to generate a digital library on a previously unimaginable scale is incredible. This collaboration provides a tremendous opportunity to document bird observations worldwide and provides a stable, long-term, and easy-to-use archive for your images and audio. We aim to launch this new functionality throughout eBird within the next couple months. Want to try it out sooner than that? Read on.
Please join us in congratulating Adrien Mauss of Mulhouse, France, winner of the August 2015 eBird Challenge, sponsored by Carl Zeiss Sports Optic. Our August winner was drawn from among those who submitted at least 31 complete checklists in August. Adrien’s name was drawn randomly from the 1,878 eBirders who achieved the August challenge threshold. Adrien will receive new ZEISS Conquest HD 8×42 binoculars for his eBirding efforts. We asked Adrien to tell us a little more about himself, his use of eBird, and his love of birds – read on for more!
In 2015, Noah Strycker is attempting to become the first person to see 5000 species of birds—about half of the avian species on Earth—in one calendar year! Noah is now more than two-thirds through 365 straight days of birding around the globe, with an itinerary covering 34 countries and all seven continents, on one continuous, all-out, global birding trip. To date he has covered Antarctica, S