October Global Big Day 2018

Yesterday was the eBird event called October Global Big Day. Data is still coming in. The following stats were relevant at 9:00 pm MST Sunday October 7.

Colombia had the most species, of course, getting 53% of there all-time species count on one day! Congratulations Colombia! 

Canada did pretty well, too, getting 47% of our all-time species! What is especially cool is that the East Kootenay contributed first records for a couple of species in Canada. From what I can tell, based only on the names of contributors I recognize, the East Kootenay contributed the first Barrow's Goldeneye and American Avocet and...

And last but not lesser, the only record so far of Lesser Goldfinch!  This is my personal motivation for checking out these stats and writing this post, because, of course, I and birding buddy Joe, are the ones who found it! Haha.  This is a first for the East Kootenay and a lifer for me!  I haven't found a new bird for my region since the Tufted Duck back in 2013.  I was so excited when I saw it my heart was pounding and I almost fell over.

We would have missed it if we hadn't turned right instead of left or called it quits. It was a beautiful autumn day so why not check out just one more spot.  I have been waiting for one of these to be recorded in the region for some time, since the rest of the southern part of BC seems to have them quite regularly now.  (I am also waiting for Crested Caracara, long shot but you never know).

Anyway, just a happy little Big Day story.

View the Canada list here on eBird.

Some of my eBird stats

It's fun to know a little bit of MS Access - enough to get yourself into trouble and seemlingly waste some time.

Here is a little summary of my lifetime eBird stats I whipped up in a couple of hours while the sun strengthened out my office window.

NB the only non-species included is Rock Pigeon (Feral - whatever it's called
Hours - on checklists - 3 minutes assigned for casual aka incidental checklists
Distance - on checklists - obviously doesn't include travel time to / from / between

2014 was a big year for species because of my trip to Mexico.
2016 was a big year for distance because of lots of field trips with others in the area.
2015 was good because I broke 200 only locally.

This year was fantastic with all the curlew and LEWO work.

Hey, it all counts as fun!

Year	Species	Checklists	Hours	Days Duration	Nr of Days	Distance
2000	80	49	2.5	0.1	36	0.0
2001	69	47	3.9	0.2	29	2.8
2002	55	42	2.8	0.1	23
2003	17	15	0.8	0.0	8
2004	160	93	8.1	0.3	36	12.1
2005	174	217	84.9	3.5	69	300.8
2006	76	63	15.1	0.6	31	47.6
2007	75	6	11.6	0.5	4	156.6
2008	123	38	13.0	0.5	18	30.5
2009	170	170	65.4	2.7	36	222.6
2010	185	280	94.1	3.9	55	247.5
2011	125	113	25.0	1.0	60	85.0
2012	186	395	149.8	6.2	122	514.2
2013	179	337	171.2	7.1	96	542.3
2014	319	531	272.9	11.4	152	973.8
2015	201	492	202.7	8.4	157	699.6
2016	199	567	291.2	12.1	150	1004.1
2017	177	483	244.8	10.2	133	772.5

 

Skookumchuck Prairie IBA