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eBird News and Features

The winter of the Snowy Owl

February 02, 2012
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Back in late November, eBird reviewer Sam Galick got us ready for the Snowy Owl invasion of 2011-2012. For three months now eBirders across the US and Canada have been reveling in these striking tundra emissaries, which have appeared from coast to coast, many well south of their normal range. eBirders Jesse Ellis and Skye Haas have mined the email reports and listservs to ensure that no Snowy Owl report has escaped eBird's net. Thanks to their efforts, and submissions from thousands of eBirders worldwide, this surely has been the best documented Snowy Owl invasion in the history of ornithology. With three months of data under our belts, and 2-3 months left to enjoy these majestic raptors before they head north, this is a great time to compare this winter's irruption to years past. By any metric, this is one of the larger invasions, but how big is it? What do the geographical patterns tell us? Below we explore this winter's Snowy Owl invasion within a historical context. But first, here's a quick quiz: how many US states have never recorded a Snowy Owl? Which ones?

County Quest inspires record eBirding in Vermont

February 02, 2012
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As eBird has grown, the program has benefited more and more from local promotion and engagement of the local birding community. Those of us that manage eBird are concentrated in Ithaca, NY (and a couple other cities), and can only interact with a certain number of people in a given year. But the growing community of eBirders around the country are increasingly taking it upon themselves to engage their local communities and get their friends more involved with and excited about eBirding. Many are giving eBird talks and workshops at their local bird club or birding festival (see our promotional material here) and developing other novel ways to get people excited about eBird. Here we'd like to highlight last year's 'Vermont 2011 County Birding Quest', which engendered some friendly competition to make 2011 the best year ever for eBirding in Vermont.

Fill in the gaps--bird the road less traveled (February 2012)

January 31, 2012
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eBirders often email us and ask where they should go birding in order to make the biggest impact in regions with little data. It's perhaps little surprise that eBird checklist submissions are most dense in areas with large human populations, so getting away from those areas is a good first step for filling in the data gaps in eBird. But seeing these gaps can be really astonishing, and with the help of map wizard Paul Hurtado, we've come up with a few neat ways to visualize eBird data density at the county level. These maps are a visualization of the total number of eBird checklists submitted in each US county in the month of February across all years. These maps show the total number of checklists per square mile of county area--a better way to see data density in states with large counties. Pull up your state map and see how your home county is faring. And better yet, find a county that's white, pink, or yellow, and go do as many eBird checklists as you can there this February!

eBird Update--Now embed photos in your checklists!

January 11, 2012
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We're getting lots of emails requesting details on how to embed photos into eBird checklists so in case you missed it last time, here it is again! We are excited to report that it is now possible to embed photos within checklists from photo-sharing sites such as Flickr and Picassa! This not only makes the checklists look more attractive, but also makes it easier for reviewers to review and confirm your rare sightings. These images will be viewable in eBird checklists (accessed via My eBird and point maps), in eBird Alerts online, and will be accessible to eBird reviewers, making their job much easier. For example, the Lark Sparrow pictured here will be easy to confirm, and so will the other rarities seen on this day, including a local mega-vagrant at this location -- House Sparrow! View checklist.

eBirder of the Month: Zachary DeBruine

January 05, 2012
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We have a fairly small team here at Cornell that develops eBird, and are blessed with a community of tens of thousands of eBirders who have even more ideas of how to improve eBird. One way we hope to expand eBird's functionality and appeal is to make it easier for everyone to access data. A couple years ago we released an eBird API, which gives programmers access to data from eBird to display it in new and novel ways. There are several gadgets and commercial applications that now use eBird data from this API. But one of our favorites was created and is maintained by a college student and this month's eBirder of the Month, Zachary DeBruine. 

eBird paper published in PLoS Biology

December 21, 2011
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Thanks eBirders! You've done it again. Your active participation in eBird allowed us to publish a paper that highlights how eBird engages the birding community in science and conservation in one of the leading scientific journals in the world, PLoS Biology. We hope that this publication shows the ways that you (the eBird community) shape our thinking about eBird, and also demonstrates how your observations are being used by scientists and the conservation community. Because PLoS Biology is an open access journal, we encourage you to share this link and content with anyone interested in reading, reproducing, or distributing it. Feel free to translate it, post it to listservs, or put it to use in any other way. We hope you view the article here. 

eBird Rare Bird Alerts are here!

December 19, 2011
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After releasing Year Alerts last week, we are happy to announce another exciting Alert option -- the eBird Rare Bird Alert. This alert basically takes the eBird Notable Birds Google Gadget and moves it into an eBird Alert environment, meaning that you can now receive hourly or daily email summaries, or just go view rare birds on the web at our eBird alerts page. One key update is the addition of counties to the available alert regions, meaning you can customize your rare bird alert experience more than ever. The new Rare Bird Alert notifies you about any unusual bird that has been reported in your region of interest, and provides a link to the location and to the checklist so you can get more information about the sighting, and make the critical call as to whether it's worth calling in sick to work!

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Most Checklists Submitted for Current Month
California -- 5658
Texas -- 3350
New York -- 3111
Florida -- 2599
Ohio -- 2500
Maryland -- 2050
Ontario -- 2037
New Jersey -- 1949
Pennsylvania -- 1776
Wisconsin -- 1652
Virginia -- 1607
Massachusetts -- 1540
Michigan -- 1503
New Hampshire -- 1388
Washington -- 1384
Arizona -- 1245
North Carolina -- 1096
Colorado -- 1027
Oregon -- 998
Illinois -- 914
British Columbia -- 869
South Dakota -- 868
Minnesota -- 832
South Carolina -- 826
Utah -- 791
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