Category Archives: eBird

A Morning Dog Walk

We awoke this morning to the call of a Common Paraque, a furtive desert bird that I’ve rarely seen but often heard. This one was in a tree just outside the Airstream but when I went out, barefooted with a flashlight, it flew off and all I got was bruised feet from the sticks and pebbles. Here’s a shot – not mine – of this elusive bird.

Penny and I took our normal early morning walk, just at daybreak, and wandered through the nearly-deserted campground. Many of the folks who stay here all winter have moved on (we leave Monday for another park.)

A pack of coyotes, not far off, started some wild howling, which always gets Penny’s attention. She listens but has no inclination to join her cousins.

The sunrise on our walk was spectacular, developing as we moved along, resulting in this scene as we neared the finish.

Just then, four cottontails pranced out into the roadway, freezing on the asphalt when they saw us. Not exactly Mensa candidates. Penny did her stalking routine and nearly pulled my arm off when they ran. As we got to our site, our resident Curved-bill Thrasher greeted us. It will be singing most of the day.

It’s sweatshirt and shorts weather this morning but will get into the mid-70’s later on. We are finally getting some normal Texas weather after a cool damp February.

eBird Targets–Exploring the Possibilities

Cornell’s eBird just announced the launch of eBird Targets–a new tool that creates a prioritized list of county, state, or life birds that you can expect to find in a region. You enter a region, range of months, and then select the list you’d like to compare. eBird compares your selected list against the full species list for the selected region and months, creating a target species list that can be sorted taxonomically or by frequency (the percentage of checklists that have reported the species). Each time you submit a checklist to eBird, a geo-referenced tag is created that allows you to keep track of your lists on the My eBird pages. From the simple life list to very focused region-based year lists, eBird Targets allows birders to play the games they find most interesting while creating more and better data for science.

I decided to run a list to see what I might find in my target county for this year, Lamoille. I am sort of stuck on 130 species and recent visits have drawn blanks and the combination of other commitments, weather, and the departure of many of my “missing” birds, make 135 to 140 a reasonable expectation.  So let’s see what eBird says — what I want are the birds that will be there during the next six weeks that I don’t have on the year’s list.

So first, I run this query:

Screen Shot 2014-11-14 at 3.24.11 PM

Now this is for a life list for the county, which in my case is the same as the year list.  The report shows 34 species and ranks them by frequency — so if I can get five I’ll be happy.

Screen Shot 2014-11-14 at 3.26.45 PM

The other neat aspect of this program is that it provides a map of where a given species was reported in the past, highlighting recent sightings.  Here is one for Evening Grosbeak.

Screen Shot 2014-11-14 at 3.31.00 PM

I’m sure that I’ll be using this a lot as we start traveling to states in the Southwest. Combined with alerts from eBird, email listings, and various iPhone apps that cull eBird data, we have a lot of tools available.

The eBird team ends with this suggestion:

Please give the new eBird Targets output a try, and use it to find everything from your next life bird to your next year bird in your home county. Have fun, and submit lots of complete eBird checklists along the way!

5 Most Viewed Birds in BirdsEye: November 2013

From BirdsEye Newsletter #11: December 2013

1.    Black-bellied Whistling-Duck: a famous wanderer and local rarity in many parts of the country, but could it be that it was the most-viewed species in part because it is first on the list when sorted in taxonomic order?  We’ll keep an eye on it over the next few months to find out!

2.    Snow Goose: these guys were just arriving in numbers in November in much of their wintering range.  They are also locally rare in many areas, so they are of interest to many state and county listers.

3.    Pin-tailed Whydah: What!? How did Pin-tailed Whydah beat out Nutmeg Mannikin?  This exotic is fairly well-established in Southern California and is apparently starting to get some attention!

4.    Snowy Owl: big invasion year, as shown in this BirdsEye screen shot!

5.    Amazon Kingfisher: 2nd ABA record in Texas! A good bird by just about any measure!  No wonder so many people wanted to find it.

Local Birding With The Vizsla

I decided to stay close to home today as I work through a partial recovery of my pinched neck nerve.  Walking and exercise seems to help while driving can be problematic.

Just before we started out, this White-throated Sparrow was chowing down on thistle seed.

Just before we started out, this White-throated Sparrow was chowing down on thistle seed.

So, Penny and I trucked down to the Wrightsville Reservoir where she can run free and where there are few visitors this time of year.  She did her best, running to and fro, to scare off every bird in Washington County.  There were plenty to satisfy her and me.

The first birds we saw on the water were these Common Mergansers.

The first birds we saw on the water were these Common Mergansers.

As Penny raced up and down the paths and along the shoreline, the Mallards and mergansers just moved out a little further, while a couple of Canada Geese honked their displeasure, from a distance.  The whole area is flooded all winter and spring (this a flood control dam) and only now is drying out.  Dozens of Song Sparrows sang their hearts out and chased one another in the morning 40 degree temperatures.

You can't see me here. A Song Sparrow watched us pass by.

You can’t see me here. A Song Sparrow watched us pass by.

There were many Swamp Sparrows singing their “sewing machine” song and I got wonderful looks at several.  My fingers were numb from the temperatures and they keep moving, and are in the brush, so they made photography impossible.   They are my 70th County bird.

Later in the day, we birded our property and the adjacent forest.  One of the highlights was a pair of Brown Creepers working on our white pines.  I heard them first and then laid on the forest floor to watch them (easier on the neck).  We have a couple of pairs that seem to be in residence and it is always a treat to hear and see them.

I love Hermit Thrushes. They don't seem to be vocalizing yet but we have a few that I hope are nesting here.

I love Hermit Thrushes. They don’t seem to be vocalizing yet but we have a few that I hope are nesting here.

We came home to an array of birds in our backyard, both at the feeder and in surrounding trees.  Here is a shot of a Dark-eyed Junco and a pair of Purple Finches on the same branch of our old apple tree.

The Song Sparrow to the right looks too red and the Dark-eyed Junco looks too light but it was just the afternoon lighting angle.

The Dark-eyed Junco to the left looks too light but it was just the afternoon lighting angle.

Here are the eBird reports from today.

Wrightsville Reservoir – East Montpelier (190 acres), Washington, US-VT
Apr 26, 2013 8:25 AM – 9:44 AM
Protocol: Traveling
1.0 mile(s)
Comments:     Northern end by swimming area <br />Submitted from BirdLog NA for iOS, version 1.5.3
17 species

Canada Goose  2
Mallard  6
Common Merganser  5
Downy Woodpecker  1
Eastern Phoebe  2
Blue Jay  1
American Crow  3
Common Raven  1
Black-capped Chickadee  X
Golden-crowned Kinglet  1
American Robin  4
Yellow-rumped Warbler  1
Song Sparrow  X
Swamp Sparrow  X     Numerous singing lustily
White-throated Sparrow  6
Red-winged Blackbird  X
Purple Finch  2

Dick’s Backyard-woods, Washington, US-VT
Apr 26, 2013 3:00 PM – 4:28 PM
Protocol: Traveling
1.5 mile(s)
Comments:     Dog walk – long <br />Submitted from BirdLog NA for iOS, version 1.5.3
13 species

Mourning Dove  1
Downy Woodpecker  1
Hairy Woodpecker  1
American Crow  2
Black-capped Chickadee  X
Red-breasted Nuthatch  1
White-breasted Nuthatch  1
Brown Creeper  2
Ruby-crowned Kinglet  2
Hermit Thrush  2
Song Sparrow  4
Dark-eyed Junco  X
Purple Finch  2

 

 

Birdseye BirdLog App Now $.99 — Get It

In conjunction with Great Backyard Bird Count, the wonderful app BirdLog is available for $.99 for a limited time.  I paid $9.99 and think it was worth every penny — you may recall I raved about it here.  How can you miss for less than a dollar?

BirdLog lets you tally birds as you move along on a birding outing and submit the report as soon as you are done.  In the frigid weather we’ve been having, I often wait until I get my fingers thawed out in the truck.  One thing I like is the easy way to put in a personal hotspot — if you have 3G, the GPS lists your location and you can just change the name to one that you like, and voila — it’s ready for eBird.  I often go home and edit the eBird report, adding photos.

birdlog-4-set-datebirdlog-2-select-location
I use BirdLog on my iPhone but they have an Android version as well.  This offer lasts only until February 18th.  Check it out — it’s quite a bargain.

Sign up by RSS feed or via email to have future articles sent to you. 

Add a Photo to Your eBird Checklist

After using eBird for several years, I’m learning more about some of the features that enhance my reporting.  I learned last month that the “comment” section for a given sighting is not viewable by anyone but reviewers and me — but is not the place to make bird-specific comments.  Last week, I posted about how to embed a map in a given report – which could really help folks from other areas find a spot where you saw that rare bird.

I’ve noted, in reviewing eBird reports, that some include photos of the bird(s) that they are reporting.  I was initially placing links to my Flickr image but just  learned a better way.  Here’s how the eBird folks describe it:

Guidelines for photo embedding

Although we want the photo embedding to be fun for eBirders and think it is a great way to document your rare finds or share a day’s birding with friends, we do want to make a few recommendations for how best to use this functionality.

1) Although it is possible to paste photos in both your Checklist Comments (i.e., from the Date and Effort page in Step 2 of data entry), we would like to ask that photos of birds be pasted in the species comments for that species. This ensures that they will be useful for documentation for that species.

2) Photos in checklist comments might be of scenery, people and friends, or non-birds seen on your trip. Please use these as you see fit.

3) Please limit your embedded photos to one or two examples per species. We don’t currently have a limit to how many photos can be shown, but remember that when the photos are embedded using code from the photo sharing websites they should link back to that site. We recommend providing representative photos that are helpful fordocumentation; the full suite of photos can be posted to your website.

4) It is very important that the photos you link to be of the actual individuals observedin the field. While it is not necessary that you have photographed the bird in question (i.e., they could be photos taken by a friend), posting photos of some other individual photographed somewhere else could be very confusing for reviewers, and other viewers, who interpret t as documentation of the bird you saw. Please use this feature to post images of the bird you observed.

5) The photos look best using medium dimensions. Most websites will give you an option of what size to display the images. We recommend using medium dimensions (about 400 x 400 pixels, or so).

6) It’s important to realize that you cannot upload photos directly from your home computer to eBird–at least not yet! For now, a third-party photo sharing site must be used, but there are plenty of great free services for that available online, such as Flickr and Picassa.

Linking from Flickr

If you use Flickr (www.flickr.com), a free service for hosting your photos, thendisplaying them in eBird is quite easy:

1. Go to any of your photos uploaded to Flickr and click on the image to get the full view with the full set of options.

2. Above the photo there are Facebook and Twitter icons and to the right of that is adrop-down menu called “Share”. Click on this and then select “Grab the HTML/BBCode”.

3. Select “Medium” size for the photos and make sure the HTML radio button is selected.

4. Then select the text (one click selects it all), copy, and then paste this string of code into the eBird species comments.

Be sure that the photos are set to “public”. When you save your eBird checklist you should see the photos displayed.

How to embed photos from Flickr. Click the share icon at the top of the photo and you get a drop-down menu. Select the "Grab the HTML/BBCode" option and then click to select that text block. This is what you will paste in your eBird species comments.

How to embed photos from Flickr. Click the share icon at the top of the photo and you get a drop-down menu. Select the “Grab the HTML/BBCode” option and then click to select that text block. This is what you will paste in your eBird species comments.

Linking from Picasa Web

Picasa Web (www.picasaweb.google.com) is another free service for hosting your photos online. Here’s how:

1. Go to any of your photos uploaded to Picasa and click on them to get the full view with the full set of options.

2. On the right side is a little chain with the words “link to this photo” and an “Embdedimage” box where you can grab the HTML code to embed the photo.

3. Before cutting and pasting this code, be sure to select “Medium” size for the photos.

4. Then select the text (one click selects it all), copy, and paste into eBird species comments.

Be sure that the photos are “public”. The code that comes from Picasa is quite a bit longer and more complex than what Flickr uses, but it works just as well.

Here’s the report I filed today with two photos:

The eBird report I filed this morning.

The eBird report I filed this morning.

 

Texas Century Club

Last winter, while on a bird walk in Falcon State Park in Texas, I met a guy who was participating in the Texas Century Club, where birders try to identify 100 birds in 100 Texas counties.  He was well underway, having done it for several years, and had a long “tick list” of species he was looking for.  The park sits astraddle two counties, Starr and Zapata, and at one point on the walk, we saw a bird he needed for one county, but not the other — and we were just inside the wrong county.  Lots of comments about flushing it and herding it a few hundred yards to the north.

Later that day, I ran into him again at a farm pond where waterfowl congregate and we talked more about the club.  Like any competition, there are serious competitors and other who just do it when they are birding — he struck me as kind of in the middle.  It was an interesting look into a group about which I knew nothing.

Texas is big (254 counties) and most birders probably spend the majority of their time in less than 20 Texas counties. This is just under 8% of Texas counties! It also has lots of birds — one lister has 401 species seen in El Paso county alone. 

The Texas Century Club is a challenge established in 2003 by the Texas Ornithological Society to encourage its members to record 100 species of birds in 100 Texas counties.  The idea is to get birders to record the birds in more than the traditional hot spots. To “bird your own patch.”  To explore the road less traveled.  So far, one birder, Anthony Hewetson of Lubbock has logged 100 birds in 100 counties.

There are several levels of award; 5, 10, 25, 50 and 75 counties before you reach the ultimate goal of 100 species in 100 counties. The five county award level is open to all birders. The higher levels of awards are open only to Texas Ornithological Society Members.

Do other states have activities like this?  I know that in Vermont, we are competing amongst counties to see which of the 14 counties list the most species in 2011.  Who else has something going like this?