eBird works

Study shows that eBird data is actually pretty useful and just as accurate as professional studies. I knew it, I told ya so.

Time for professionals to use it more often. And while we're at it, let's keep getting all that historical data from people's journals and notebooks into eBird.  It's worth it.

Click here to go to Science Daily article

It also talks a bit about the decline in common species.

Robin Junco flip

I perceived we were having an unusual influx of Dark-eyed Junco this spring so I generated some eBird charts to double check.

Sure enough, there are a lot of them all of a sudden and this is quite different from last year.

With this year, 2018 on the left, and last year on the right, we can see there's been a total flip of numbers of Juncos compared to Robins.  AND they both have arrived (according to eBird reports) a bit earlier.  Mind you, we did not get the huge late dumps of snow this year as we did last year.  Still, it is mostly road edges and bare spots under trees that are providing habitat.

This makes me very happy - that there are lots of Juncos.  There has been a darth of them in the fall the last couple of years so perhaps this bodes well for the population.

I loved watching them below my living room window this morning, just feet away, no binos (or "goggles" as the RDEK planner called them the other night at a Wasa OCP open house) required.  How they could find last year's salsify seeds, minus parachute, in between the stems of creeping Thyme boggles my mind.  Then, one was actually singing from its perch on my orange honeysuckle - a rare treat.

Happy birding!

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