Category: Wildlife

This month’s eBirder of the Month challenge, sponsored by Carl Zeiss Sports Optics, will keep get you snapping photos and recording bird sounds. Every time you take a photo or hold out a microphone, you’re creating an incredibly powerful piece of data. Media help document records, provide resources for learning and education, and also pave the way for future eBird and birding tools like Merlin Photo ID. The eBirder of the month will be drawn from eBirders who submit 15 or more eligible checklists in September containing at least one rated photo or sound. Checklists must be for observations during this month; not historical checklists entered during September. Winners will be notified by the 10th of the following month.

In just under two years, the eBird/Macaulay Library partnership has resulted in more than 4.5 million photos and sounds added to eBird checklists and archived in the Macaulay Library. Incredible. This collection has become an unparalleled resource to document bird sightings worldwide, as well as providing an exceedingly valuable dataset for researchers and birders worldwide. As this collection continues to grow, being able to sort out specific photos becomes increasingly important. Learn how to rate images to make your photos as useful as they can be.

One of the most exciting uses of this media collection has been for Merlin Photo ID—automatic identification of bird photos. Merlin Photo ID now works for more than 1,500 species in the Americas and Europe, and will continue to expand in the coming months and years. In the future we plan to also integrate Merlin Photo ID into the eBird/Macaulay upload process, helping provide real-time feedback on your bird sightings as you add images.

The sightings and photos that you have contributed through eBird have made Merlin Photo ID possible. The best part about this is that you can help! By taking part in this month’s eBirder of the Month Challenge, your photos help make it possible for us to deliver the best Merlin, and eBird, that we can. Add your photos and sounds today.

Each month we will feature a new eBird challenge and set of selection criteria. The monthly winners will each receive a new ZEISS Conquest HD 8×42 binocular. In addition, don’t forget about the 2017 Checklist-a-day Challenge—can you submit 365 eligible checklists this year?

Carl Zeiss Sports Optics is a proven leader in sports optics and is the official optics sponsor for eBird. “Carl Zeiss feels strongly that by partnering with the Cornell Lab we can provide meaningful support for their ability to carry out their research, conservation, and education work around the world,” says Mike Jensen,  President of Carl Zeiss Sports Optics, North America. “The Cornell Lab is making a difference for birds, and from the highest levels of our company we’re committed to promoting birding and the Lab’s work, so there’s a great collaboration. eBird is a truly unique and synergistic portal between the Lab and birders, and we welcome the opportunity to support them both.”

Find out more:

eBirder of the Month

Source: eBird VT Birdwatching

You can now view a digital bird guide for any hotspot or region in the world: an Illustrated Checklist. The best part? It’s all using sightings that you contributed! We take the highest-rated photo and sound from the Macaulay Library, combine with eBird data to show seasonal occurrence, and include the last date when a species was seen in that place. The result: a quick overview for the region that gives the most relevant information. Want your photo to be the best image for that region? Add them to your eBird checklists! To check out Illustrated Checklists, search for any region or search for any hotspot. At the top of the species list you’ll see a new tab titled “Illustrated Checklist”. Here’s Vermont as an example.

This functionality is another great example of the close connection between eBird and the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We hope these Illustrated Checklists provide an exciting new way to visualize the contributions you’ve made to eBird and ML, an added incentive to add your top photos from your favorite spots, and a window through which you can explore the contributions of others. Have fun, and don’t forget to add star ratings for your images! Now we’re going to get back to uploading our photos to our favorite patches…

Source: eBird VT Birdwatching

Your bird sightings can influence more than just the birding and conservation worlds. eBird checklists are a quintessential example of ‘Big Data’—a massive dataset, chock full of patterns, that contains myriad opportunities to explore exciting questions in fields like statistics or machine learning. Giles Hooker, Associate Professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, has been using eBird data to understand inherent biases in predictive models that use large datasets. How do you control for as much bias as possible? How can you quantify uncertainty? Read more about how your eBird data are having impact here.

Source: eBird VT Birdwatching

The Second Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Vermont (2003-2007), a project of the Vermont Atlas of Life, was an amazing effort by the birding community. Many of us searched the state to document breeding bird species. The atlas collected important conservation information and it was a lot of fun. Many of us miss it! But with Vermont eBird, the atlas never ends! We want you to keep documenting the nesting status of the birds you are finding.

You can make your eBird sightings even more valuable by adding breeding information to them. How? The eBird data entry system has the ability to enter highest-level breeding codes along with your bird observations on both the web site or the mobile app.

On the web site, when you get to step 3 of entering a checklist – what did you see and hear – next to each species that you enter the number seen a button appears that says “add details”. If you click this button you will be able to add comments about the species and you will have a button that says “Breeding Code”. This allows you to choose the highest possible breeding code you observed while bird watching. On the mobile app, if you open a species on your checklist you can add comments and select a breeding code.

Perhaps you saw an American Crow carrying nesting material or a chickadee excavating a nest hole. Maybe you found an eagle nest while paddling. Whatever breeding evidence you observed and no matter the bird species, it’s all important for the eBird database. Our goal is to collect information about the timing and locations of bird nesting. This will be the first continuous, year-round, worldwide, breeding bird atlas effort. Breeding Bird Atlases have been conducted in many countries, states, and provinces around the world and have taught us much about where and when birds are breeding. This eBird effort differs in a few fundamental ways.

There are no “safe dates”. Many atlases make assumptions about the breeding status of a species based on where and when it occurs. At eBird, you provide these specifics with your complete bird checklists and in the future we hope to be able to use these data to automatically identify periods of breeding or probable breeding.

Although our breeding codes are listed as confirmed, probable, or possible, we realize this listing is highly dependent on species, location, and date and in many cases may require a bit more information before being useful for establishing breeding presence of a species. These are meant as a general guide; the more important thing is to record the behaviors observed. Future users of the data can analyze the data in conjunction with local understanding of status to make their own assumptions about breeding based on the location, date, and behaviors observed.

You can access your collected breeding code information from each checklist’s observation report and through “download my data“. Using the download option allows you to see all breeding records that you have submitted to date.

eBird currently does not have any data output (i.e., under ‘View and Explore Data’) associated with this information (although as the data accumulates, the development of output graphics moves higher on our task list). We can provide the data to interested parties upon request. We do plan to implement ways to view and explore the data within eBird in the future.

We hope you’ll help us to keep tracking the locations and phenology of Vermont’s breeding birds using eBird.

Source: eBird VT Birdwatching

Coming from a leafy shrub is the pure song of a Blue-winged Warbler, just as it sounds on your smart phone app.  Searching for the songster, you find the singing bird but it definitely not the coloration of the Blue-winged in your field guide.  Yikes!  What to do?

The so-called “winged warblers” are a complex of Blue-winged and Golden-winged Warblers and their many hybrids. They are most commonly found in shrubby, abandoned farm fields. Two of the hybrids are known by the names Brewster’s Warbler and Lawrence’s Warbler.  Population structures appear to be rapidly changing here in Vermont and elsewhere, and we are trying to keep track of what is going on.

As more and more observers in Vermont are hearing and seeing these birds, we should become more careful about how we report them.  Attentive observers are documenting that there is no fidelity between the songs we hear and what species or hybrid might be doing the singing.  You cannot trust what species or hybrid is singing by ear alone.  Moreover, careful visual observations often report more birds with hybrid characteristics than birds with pure species plumage. All these different birds have been described as a “Winged-warbler soup … a real, bird-gene potpourri”.

So it becomes necessary, where possible, to carefully document the plumage of the singing bird. Not just the gross appearance, but in detail throughout – a from bill to tail, back to belly. Well, that sounds straight-forward enough, but these are warblers.  And warblers don’t always sit waiting for their protrait.  More often than not, you won’t be able to get the good looks you want or need.

Vermont eBird, therefore, has created these guidelines for submitting Winged-warbler observations.  Each of the categories listed is already in use in eBird.  Since the birds are complex, the guidelines are more complex than for most birds we report.  Look very carefully at these categories, as some are quite similar to each other.

(a) Heard only, regardless of song —- submit as Blue-winged/Golden-winged Warbler.

(b) Birds seen only, plumage incompletely seen —- submit as Blue-winged/Golden-winged Warbler.

(c) Plumage well seen, clearly typical Golden-winged regardless of song, and carefully described —- submit as Golden-winged Warbler.

(d) Plumage well seen, clearly typical Blue-winged regardless of song, and carefully described —- submit as Blue-winged Warbler.

(e) Most birds showing traits of both Blue-winged and Golden-winged Warbler, regardless of song —- submit as Blue-winged x Golden-winged Warbler (hybrid).

(f) Plumage well seen, carefully described, and bearing signature plumage of Brewster’s Warbler —- submit as Brewster’s Warbler (hybrid).

(g) Plumage well see, carefully described, and bearing signature plumage of Lawrence’s Warbler —- submit as Lawrence’s Warbler (hybrid). 

Check the “Show Rarities” box on the submission page if you want these categories to appear in the list of species to select from as you create your checklist.  Or, you can use “Add Species” to go directly to the category(s) you want.

Thanks for your help in finding and documenting these beautiful, but complex, birds!

 

Source: eBird VT Birdwatching

VCE Releases a Major Report Today Documenting the Status of Vermont’s Forest Birds

A 25-year study of Vermont’s forest birds, including woodpeckers, warblers and other iconic species, has documented a 14.2 percent overall population decline during the period, raising concerns about birds and forests alike.

In one of the longest-running studies of its kind in North America, the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE) also issued practical recommendations for landowners who may want to conserve or manage their forests for bird abundance and diversity. Vermont forests support more than 125 bird species, VCE reported, and more than 47,000 jobs in the state.

“Whether we enjoy them at the feeder or in the wild, birds are vital to the health of our forests,” said Steve Faccio, a VCE biologist and principal author of a report on the study titled The Status of Vermont Forest Birds: A Quarter Century of Monitoring. “If we ignore these trends in bird populations, we risk losing not only birds but the vitality of our forests as well.”

While they require forests for nesting and migration, birds in turn promote forest health. They foster tree growth, for example, by consuming leaf-eating insects. Birds also disperse seeds and pollinate trees and other plants.

In its study, VCE methodically counted birds in 31 mature, unaltered forest tracts across the state each June for 25 years during the peak of breeding season. Overall, the counts revealed a 14.2 percent decline in abundance among 125 bird species from 1989 through 2013, with some species increasing, some decreasing and some remaining unchanged.

VCE went on to analyze in detail 34 of the most abundant and widely distributed forest bird species. Thirteen species (38 percent of the total) declined significantly during the period, including Canada Warbler, White-throated Sparrow and Great Crested Flycatcher. Eight species (24 percent of the total) increased significantly, including Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Mourning Dove and Black-throated Green Warbler. Thirteen species showed no significant change, among them the Vermont state bird, Hermit Thrush.

One guild of birds in particular — called “aerial insectivores,” which catch and eat insects on the wing — showed the most disturbing decline: a 45 percent drop in abundance over the 25-year study period. These included Chimney Swift, Eastern Phoebe, Eastern Wood-Pewee and Tree Swallow. The steep decline, VCE reported, most likely reflects broad-scale changes in insect populations, attributed to a variety of causes, such as pesticide use, acid deposition and climate change.

Any number of factors, including routine or “natural” changes in forest composition, affect bird populations. As a forest matures, its mix of birds will inevitably change. The study came during a period of statewide forest maturation, dwindling insect populations, and the arrival of West Nile Virus in Vermont. But VCE identified several “imminent, serious threats” to birds and forests:

• Fragmentation and Parcelization – As forests become fragmented by roads, development and other non-forest land uses, the amount of edge habitat increases, exposing interior forest breeding birds to predators and other threats. Additionally, many interior forest birds require large, contiguous forest blocks for breeding success.
• Non-native Invasive Species – More than half of Vermont’s tree species are threatened by three non-native insects: the emerald ash borer, Asian longhorned beetle, and hemlock wooly adelgid. Moreover, invasive earthworms are changing forest ecosystems by over-consuming leaf litter, which alters understory vegetation and soil structure and has been linked to declines among certain ground-nesting birds, including Ovenbird and Hermit Thrush.
• Climate Change – A warming planet may gradually but profoundly alter forest biodiversity, productivity and economics. Climate change alters the timing of routine seasonal events, such as tree flowering and insect emergence. When a bird species’ life cycle no longer coincides with these events, it may lose access to insect food for itself and to feed its young.
• Acid Deposition – Acidic compounds in rain, snow and fog leach nutrients from soils, limiting their availability for tree growth. Birds may be particularly sensitive to soil calcium depletion because they require calcium to produce eggshells.

VCE concludes its report with a series of practical recommendations for forest property owners who might be considering outright conservation or forest management to promote bird abundance and diversity. Among the objectives is “heterogeneity” in forest stands — trees of varying ages —  which supports a full suite of Vermont’s native forest birds. The guidelines are not intended for commercial timberlands.

• Forest management in mature stands should strive to emulate natural disturbance events, such as wind and ice storms. These widespread, but infrequent events result in small-scale perforations in the forest canopy. Foresters can achieve this with small single-tree selection, or variably sized group selection cuts (0.1 to 1 acre).
• Retaining a high proportion of large trees can support canopy and cavity nesters.  If snags are uncommon, retain or girdle medium to large, low-vigor trees.
• Conservation efforts should focus on uncommon or under-represented forest types, on large, contiguous forest blocks greater than 250 acres, and on corridors that connect existing conservation areas. When possible, forest land managers can allow natural processes to occur with minimal human disturbance.

With a 25-year study no small feat, VCE relied on its own staff biologists and a dedicated corps of skilled volunteer birdwatchers, who would rise well before dawn to follow rigorous and long-established protocols for counting birds. Year after year, the birdwatchers would walk the same route through a designated forest site, stopping at five pre-determined points and counting every bird they saw or heard over the course of 10 minutes. For the report, VCE analyzed 2,464 such point count surveys, in which a total of 32,381 birds of 125 species were detected, for an average of 13 birds per point.

“That VCE has been able to continue this effort for 25 years is a testament to the dedication of the researchers and the citizen scientists,” said Dr. Allan Strong, an ornithologist and associate professor in the Environmental Program at the University of Vermont. “Perhaps more importantly, much of our understanding of bird population dynamics comes from roadside counts, so having data from interior forests provides a unique perspective on how our bird populations have changed over the last quarter century.”

VCE continues to run the population surveys, known as the Vermont Forest Bird Monitoring Program, which is now in its thirtieth year. This latest analysis relies on data generated during the project’s first 25 years.

The Vermont Center for Ecostudies, with headquarters in Norwich, Vermont, promotes wildlife conservation across the Americas using the combined strength of scientific research and citizen engagement. Working from Canada to South America, from mountains to grasslands, VCE biologists study and protect birds, insects, amphibians and other wildlife. Joining VCE in the work is a dedicated corps of citizen volunteers.

Source: eBird VT Birdwatching

The Vermont Bird Records Committee (VBRC) is pleased to announce a new online form with media uploading for reporting observations of rare, out-of-season, and rare nesting bird species in the state. The tool was created for the committee by the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.

Founded in 1980, the mission of the VBRC is to validate records of birds within the State of Vermont and maintain the state bird checklist. The committee is composed of expert birders and ornithologists from Vermont.

This new online form has been prepared to encourage full and detailed documentation of rare or unseasonal birds observed in Vermont. Please use this online form only. We do not accept paper or emailed forms. These reports represent a permanent record of the observation and should be as detailed as possible. New reports are reviewed annually by the VBRC, which evaluates records for their acceptability to future researchers and for inclusion in the official Vermont State Bird List.

Bird records typically originate as written descriptions and/or photographs, recordings, or video that are submitted by observers involved with the discovery of a rare bird, rare nesting species, or out-of-season reports. The committee actively solicits reports of any species on the review list as well as any species not currently on the official Vermont Bird Checklist. Each year the committee publishes an annual report detailing the decisions on all species reviewed during that year. The Committee meets annually in November.

You can consult the official Vermont Bird Checklist to determine which species require Rare Species Documentation, Rare Nesting Documentation, or Out of Season Report, as well as our list of subspecies that require reports.

Please consider entering all of your bird sightings, rare or common, on Vermont eBird, a project of the Vermont Atlas of Life. All accepted records reviewed by VBRC, if not added by the observer(s), are shared in Vermont eBird and are fully searchable there.

Thank you for helping us to document Vermont’s birds.

Kent McFarland
VBRC co-chair and Vermont eBird portal manager

Source: eBird VT Birdwatching

How often have you looked at a ubiquitous Red-tailed Hawk on a roadside pole, a nearby tree, or soaring overhead, and wondered aloud about how it just looks different … or wondered if it even was a Red-tail?  We all know that Vermont’s most familiar hawk comes in different sizes, shades, and plumage patterns.  But is it just different individuals, ages, and sexes, or could it be birds from different, recognizable subspecies?

Recently it has become more and more clear, especially during the non-breeding months, that in New England and adjacent New York more than one subspecies shares our open lands and fringing forests.

Subspecies are named populations of a species which have distinctive ranges, behaviors, and identifying visible and/or vocal traits.  They may or may not be easy for most of us to tell apart.  Red-tailed Hawks currently have nine recognized subspecies in eBird, all limited globally to North and Central America.  Only three are known from New England and adjacent New York:

• “Eastern Red-tailed Hawk” (Buteo jamaicensis borealis) – ubiquitous.
• “Northern Red-tailed Hawk” (Buteo jamaicensis abieticola) – present in non-breeding months but little documentation.
• “Western/Southern Alaskan Red-tailed Hawk” (Buteo jamaicensis calurus/alascensis) – apparently rare in the Northeast.

If you are a birder in Vermont, be on the watch for, and help us learn more about these subspecies (especially abieticola) in the state, as we know very little at this point in time! On a cold and blustery day, maybe you want to go back through old Red-tailed pictures and tackle subspecies ID or just marvel at the variation (it is now super easy to upload photos to a Vermont eBird checklist!).

Cautions and pitfalls in identifying subspecies

Subspecies are not species.  It commonly takes a different mindset to see and document subspecies than species. Often variability abounds, clinal features will frustrate, and un-identifiable birds can be the norm. Reliable diagnostic characteristics may be little known, work only with statistical analyses, or be hard to see.  Caution and careful observations are the watch-words.  Do not expect to be able to identify all, many, or even just occasional birds to subspecies.

Individuals of different subspecies can freely interbreed.  As with the species as a whole, there is variation in the appearance of individuals within a subspecies population.  Subspecies distinctions may not exist, or be apparent, among juvenile or immature individuals. In general, the difference in look between subspecies of a species will be less obvious than the difference between the species as a whole and other, similar species.  Depending upon the subspecies, a few diagnostic features might define it, or it might require numerous supporting features to clearly delineate an individual of a subspecies.

Identification

Identification of Red-tailed subspecies is hard. Many will not be identifiable, even by experts.  Most of the variation among individuals is not related to subspecies status.  Birds with subspecies characteristics at the extremes of the spectrum, however, may be relatively straightforward to identify (with the help of some background reading). For those who really want to tackle this, there are a handful of additional resources below.

As is the case with many challenging identifications, it’s often a good idea to determine the age of the bird when making an ID. This is definitely true for subspecies identification of Red-tails.  Also, as is the case with many buteos, there are light and dark phase morphs within a species … sometimes helping to define a subspecies, but at other times just part of the variation within a subspecies.

The following discussion compares the principal subspecific distinctions between the common subspecies B. j. borealis and the likely occurring B. j. abieticola.

Immature birds: Immature Red-tails lack the red in the tail, but still have other identifying features including a bellyband. There is considerable variation in this plumage and identification of subspecies is difficult at best, or impossible, given the apparent overlap between juvenile and immature B. j. borealis and B. j. abieticola. It is always worthwhile to include photographs on eBird checklists, as maybe someday there will be more information that allows identification to the subspecies level. Also, it is a good idea to double check immature birds closely as young Red-shouldered Hawks can be surprisingly similar and have been reported occasionally in Vermont during the winter.

Light-morph adults: If the bird has a red tail and at least some white underneath, it’s a light-morph adult. These are the individuals most likely to be identifiable to a subspecies, including B. j. abieticola.

In general, B. j. abieticola are darker with heavier marks and warmer colors. The bellyband of B. j. abieticola has been described as dark blotches with a background of herringbone shaped marks. The bellyband of B. j. borealis ranges from a few, faint marks to a complete band (similar the photo below) that can approach B. j. abieticola.

Many B. j. abieticola also have completely dark heads with a golden sheen whereas B. j. borealis often show a paler head with a pronounced supercilium. It can also be helpful to note the pattern of the throat and breast, as B. j. abieticola tends to have a dark or heavily marked throat and at least some streaking on the upper breast.

From behind, B. j. borealis tend to have more white splotches on the back and shoulders, whereas B. j. abieticola can be a relatively solid dark brown. Confident identifications probably are only possible when most or all of these characteristics agree. Also note that ‘Western’ Red-tailed Hawks (B. j. calurus/alascensis) have a light-morph form that can be similar to B. j. abieticola, but is probably exceedingly rare in Vermont.

Dark morphs: These all black/brown birds are very rare in the East, but have been reported from Vermont once or twice. The first step is to well see and document the tail color and patterning in order to confirm the bird is a Red-tailed Hawk and not a dark-morph Rough-legged Hawk.  Be aware that dark-morph Rough-legged Hawks are regularly found in the winter in parts of the state.

Dark-morph Red-tailed Hawks apparently are not known to occur in either B. j. borealis or B. j. abieticola.  Thus dark morph birds likely represent a western subspecies (probably B. j. calurus/alascensis) that has not yet been confirmed from Vermont. Any sighting should be fully documented, ideally photographed, and a report submitted to the Vermont Bird Records Committee.

Albino or Leucistic birds: These all-white or abnormally patterned Red-tailed Hawks are surprisingly common and have been photographed in several parts of the state in recent years. Subspecies identification is probably impossible for most of them, thus they should be submitted under the generic Red-tailed Hawk option.

Reporting to the Vermont Bird Records Committee

At this writing, any birds considered to be a subspecies, other than B. j. borealis, should be submitted to the Vermont Bird Records Committee via a Rare Species Documentation form (RSD).

Guidelines for submitting to Vermont eBird

Red-tailed Hawks not considered for subspecies identity should only be submitted as Red-tailed Hawk, and not as Red-tailed Hawk (borealis).

When reporting Red-tailed Hawks to Vermont eBird, you may have already noticed that if you click the ‘show rarities’ box, you will see multiple options as illustrated here in the eBird mobile app. It will look different if you are submitting via a computer. The listing of subspecies definitely does not mean that you must choose one of the subspecies options.

If you think you know which subspecies you saw, then choose the appropriate one and fill in all the details you can just as you would for a rare species.  If possible, attach photos to any and all Red-tailed Hawks you find.

It is possible (even likely) that a single checklist will have multiple subspecies and/or Red-tails that can’t be assigned to subspecies—check out this eBird checklist with all three options.

Vermont eBird has decided to keep all subspecies listed as rare until we have a better understanding of seasonality and abundance of both expected subspecies. Although B. j. borealis is quite common, the submission of an observation of the subspecies implies there is evidence that eliminates all other possible subspecies.

As always, enjoy the diversity of bird life in Vermont — including these subtleties of our familiar Red-tailed Hawk!

Spencer Hardy and Ian Worley, Vermont eBird Regional Editors

Additional Resources

• Canada eBird – Identifying Northern Red-tailed Hawks
• “Northern” Red-tailed Hawk (abieticola): Identification, Natural History, and Winter Survey
• Northern Red-tailed Hawks: A site dedicated to the Identification and Natural History of abieticola Red-tailed Hawks
• Eastern Ontario Birding – A Note on Northern vs. Eastern Red-tail ID
• North American Birds – Northern Red-tailed Hawk Revisited (PDF)
• eBird Help: Understanding subspecies in eBird

 

 

Source: eBird VT Birdwatching

From a Great Horned Owl on Snake Mountain on January 1st, to Long-tailed Ducks at the South Hero Causeway on December 31st, Vermont birders scoured fields and fens, mountains and meadows, lakes and lawns to discover as many species as possible during the 6th annual Vermont eBird County Quest.

The year-long contest pits county versus county, birder against birder — all engaged in a friendly rivalry for top birding honors. The main idea behind the year-long Quest is simply to get people out birding, promote camaraderie, and better document bird life across the state, using Vermont eBird.

This year marks the 14 year anniversary of Vermont eBird, the first state portal for eBird. In just a decade-and-a-half, the bird checklists that bird watchers have shared have helped make Vermont eBird, a project of the Vermont Atlas of Life, the largest citizen science biodiversity project in the state and around the world. Nearly 2,000 Vermont eBirders have submitted over 221,000 complete checklists, representing all 385 species of birds ever reported from Vermont. We’ve added nearly 112,000 images and over 500 sound recordings to Vermont checklists.

Green Mountain Birders Put up Big Numbers in 2016

With nearly 50,000 eBird checklists submitted, comprising over 250,000 bird records, representing 279 bird species, and tallied by 1,674 birders in 2016, there is no doubt it was another banner year for birders and Vermont eBird.

County Cup Champions

Franklin County, a quiet underdog just a few years ago, topped the field for the 3rd year in a row and claimed the 2016 Quest Cup with a score of 29.5 birds over par. Windsor County was second with 26 species over par.

The County Cup award is based on a carefully calculated “par” system, realizing that not all Vermont counties are created equal in terms of avian diversity. Par scores reflect the number of species that a given county should find in a year with consistent birding effort. Each year a particular county wins, 5 birds are added to their par.

The bird rich counties of Addison and Chittenden often duel for overall total bird species found. This year, Chittenden County birders edged out their rivals 245 to 240.

Statewide Winners

Many birders ventured outside their home county of course. Jim Mead continued his dominance in total species observed with a record 264 species, followed by Taj Schottland (244) and Zac Cota for 3rd (243). Ian Worley continued his amazing effort by submitting a remarkable 3,024 checklists, again besting his previous winning years. Craig Provost placed second with 2,074 checklists followed by Sue Elliott (953).

The 150 and 250 County Club

eBirders who identified 150 species or more in a county were also inducted into the prestigious “150 Club”. Even in counties with higher avian diversity, a birder must be dedicated and in the field during all four seasons to join this club.

With two eBirders, Thomas Berriman and Fred Pratt, surpassing the 150 mark for Essex County, all Vermont counties now have at least one member in the club. Fred Pratt has pulled it off for 10 counties and Craig Provost in 8 counties – remarkable efforts. Overall, nearly 100 individual birders have joined the elite 150 Club since the Vermont County eBird Quest began in 2011.

The Vermont 250 Club requires even more dedication. This is a list of eBirders that have found 250 or more bird species in Vermont during one calendar year and reported them to Vermont eBird. Jim Mead, the sole member, has passed 250 species 5 times in the last 6 years!

Rare and Out-of-season Bird Observations

eBirders also contributed many records to the Vermont Bird Records Committee (VBRC). The 36th annual report of the VBRC covered the evaluation of 48 records involving 31 species and 2 subspecies. There were no first state records for any species during this period. The first fully documented subspecies record for Audubon’s Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata auduboni) observed in Windsor, Vermont was accepted. Previously, one record from 2012 was deemed as a ‘hypothetical’ first state record because the report was submitted as a written description by a single observer only.

With no additions or subtractions this year, the official Vermont State Bird Checklist remains at 388 species, representing 22 orders and 61 families of birds. There have been 202 species found breeding in the state. The checklist can be viewed and downloaded at the VBRC website. Species taxonomy and nomenclature follow the seventh edition of the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU) Checklist of North American Birds and supplements. Subspecies group nomenclature follows taxonomy of The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World (Version 6.9).

Congratulations to everyone for a fun year of birding! We hope some of you will vie for top honors in 2017. You can follow the scoreboard all year long and see where you rank. Even if you come up short, all of the data collected in Vermont eBird is valuable for science, education, and conservation. The game is afoot!

 

Source: eBird VT Birdwatching

2017 marks the 14 year anniversary of Vermont eBird, the first state portal for eBird. In just a decade-and-a-half, the bird checklists that you have shared have helped make eBird the largest citizen science biodiversity project in Vermont and around the world. Nearly 2,000 Vermont eBirders have submitted 218,869 complete checklists, representing all 385 species of birds ever reported from Vermont. We’ve added nearly 11,000 images and over 500 sound recordings to Vermont checklists. And we join the more than 1/3 million eBirders worldwide that have submitted 370 million bird sightings, representing 10,313 species from every country in the world!

We are continually humbled by the amazing power and passion of the Vermont birding community, and have nothing but excitement as we look to the future of what we can do together. As we compile this list of Vermont eBird’s achievements in 2016, we are reminded that these are all truly your achievements. It is your contributions that power this knowledge engine. Every time you go out and keep a list of birds you see, you’re making a real contribution to our understanding of the world’s ever-changing avian biodiversity.

So what did we do at eBird in 2016, and how did it go by so fast?! 2016 was a big year in many ways, bringing a more social side to eBird, allowing easy perusal of the information in the Macaulay Library, and much more. Here’s what made our list for 2016, broken out into different categories of impact.

Science and Conservation

• Continued to use eBird data to push forward with ground-breaking science to understand birds occurrence and movements at multiple scales, from local habitat use to continent-scale movements. This mesmerizing map of the migration of 118 species of Western Hemisphere birds is just one of the more visually striking examples.
• State of the Birds 2016: As in 2009 and 2011, eBird was drawn upon heavily for the 2016 State of North America’s Birds report. In this tri-national report, new STEM models have been developed to model bird abundance—used in this report to help estimate the year-round importance of specific regions on a single map. With reports like this, eBird is realizing its ultimate goal: using your bird sightings for groundbreaking science that leads to conservation action.
• Continued to provide eBird data as a free resource to anyone via our Data Download page, accessed via Explore Data. This is not to be understated, since these data downloads make much of the above possible and set eBird apart with its revolutionary open data access. More than 60,000 people have downloaded raw eBird data for analysis, with more than 2,000,000 visitors to the eBird website in 2016 to contribute and explore data.
• Published a paper in Biological Conservation, Using open access observational data for conservation action: A case study for birds, showcasing ways in which your eBird sightings have been used to inform on-the-ground conservation action across the world. Here are just 9 of the more than 150 real-world conservation applications: 9 Ways People Have Used eBird Data To Make Conservation Happen.

New Birding Tools

• Launched eBird Profile Pages, bringing a social element to eBird along with amazing personal maps of your eBirding footprint. There is now a way to see the name behind those checklists you’ve always seen—as long as the eBirder chooses to share it. More than 8,500 eBirders have created a public eBird Profile; check yours out today! We look forward to continuing to expand the social side of eBird in the months and years to come, helping create and foster a community where we can learn from each other and share sightings in increasingly better ways.
• As a followup to the resoundingly successful eBird/Macaulay Library media upload tool, we released Media Search—a way to peruse the amazing collection of photos and sounds from eBirders everywhere. This past month we gathered our 2 millionth image, all of which are freely searchable through Media Search. Warning: this tool can be dangerously addictive and enjoyable!

• Brought eBird Mobile, available on both iOS and Android, into a total of 24 languages worldwide and also added the ability to include breeding and behavior codes in your lists, submit portal-specific checklists, and use an expanded list of protocols. Stay tuned for an exciting array of new eBird Mobile tools in 2017 (preview of My eBird on mobile above!).

eBird Team and Partner Expansion

• Zeiss has allowed us to run competitions with generous gifts (new binoculars and great bird books!) to thank our eBird community for their commitment to submit observations in the best possible way. We are excited to continue our eBirder of the Month awards in 2017 and we thank everyone who participated in 2016. In 2017, will you win free Zeiss binoculars? Try taking the Checklist-a-day Challenge!
• Six new people joined the core Team eBird here at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: Heather Wolf, who focuses on front-end development and built much of the beautiful new Birds of North America; Dave Childs, who keeps the networks and technical systems of eBird working and moving forward; Francisco Padilla, who creates our quarterly datasets for download and works on new ways to share and deliver big data volume; Jasdev Imani, who has been instrumental in creating the amazing new Merlin Photo ID tool; Iain Downie, the mastermind behind the eBird Mobile for Android improvements; and Taylor Long, a UI designer and front-end developer, who has been working on exciting new ways to explore eBird’s interactive species distribution models.

2016 eBird Growth

• Through the time of this writing, 370 million bird sightings have been entered into eBird. This includes more than 84 million in 2016 alone; with 11,843,651 coming from just the month of May. The total from May is more observations than were collected in eBird’s first FIVE YEARS combined. eBird’s contributions make up close to half of all of the biodiversity in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). See the eBird GBIF dataset here.
• The second Global Big Day set a new bar for birding’s biggest day. On 14 May 2016, 17,300 birders collectively noted 6,333 species of bird, reporting 47,000 checklists from 151 countries. Vermont eBirders found 182 species in Vermont alone! Mark your calendar for next year’s Global Big Day: 13 May 2017.
• Added new languages for the eBird website—Norwegian and Ukrainian—while also adding bird names to now support more than 50 languages and regional versions. See a full list of our eBird Common Names here.

It has been an incredibly exciting year, and we can’t wait to see what we can build together with you in 2017.

Source: eBird VT Birdwatching