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| Year round residents - Brown pelican and brown booby in Leinster Bay Photo Gail Karlsson |
One reason I
decided to try eBird was because I was disappointed to be missing the Audubon
Society’s annual Christmas bird count. It’s always fun to spend a morning
roaming around the neighborhood marking down the birds you can identify on the
VI checklist.
All the Christmas
bird count reports collected from St. John, and everywhere around the US, are sent
to the National Audubon Society and used to help scientists track long-term
population numbers and migration trends. This information is important for conservation
efforts as well as scientific research.
I often go on the Friday morning bird walks around Francis Bay led by National Park Service ranger Laurel Brannick to see what types of birds come to St. John at different times of the year. When I told her I would be away on the official Christmas bird count day this year, she suggested that I do my counting early, before I left town, and post the results on eBird.
I usually find the
idea of ‘e’ or ‘i’ anything pretty daunting, but I was also interested in
trying out eBird because I recently saw a presentation by a representative of
the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology who was involved in developing it. He
is currently working on tracking annual migrations using millions of bird
sighting reports posted by volunteers across the country. He cross-references
their data about where specific birds are being seen with radar images that
indicate mass movements of birds, and sound recordings of the nighttime flight
calls of migratory birds. This sophisticated merging of different information
sources means it’s becoming a lot easier to find out about the seasonal
movements and ranges of different birds.
My interest in bird
migration has so far been pretty much focused on identifying local versus transitory
herons and egrets in the Virgin Islands. I have wondered if any of the birds I
see in the northeast over the summer wind up in the Caribbean, and got excited
about using eBird to explore the Virgin Islands database of sightings.
But when I looked
on eBird, I found that there wasn’t actually all that much data specifically
about St. John.
Now I’m thinking it
would be great if more bird watchers in different areas of St. John could take
the time and make the effort to figure out how to use eBird too, so we (and
people who are visiting ) can have a better idea about which birds are coming
and going, or staying put.
Here’s how to get started:
Go to eBird.org
Click
on Submit Observations
Create
an account – name and password
Identify
a location for your observations. Enter VI in the box and a map will
come up. Use the map to choose an existing site on St John. Or you can create a
new one by clicking on the magnifying glass icon, moving it to your spot and
clicking, and then naming the spot.
Check off 'how' you went birding
- walking a trail, sitting in one place, etc – and the time and duration.
Use the checklist page provided
to report the types and numbers of birds you are confident you saw or heard. If
you can't find the species you're looking for on the checklist, use the 'Add a
species' box.
Add a photo or confirming info if asked
to. The checklist is monitored by regional experts, and if a
sighting seems unusual they may request additional info
Check
off whether or not it is a complete list of all the birds you
observed. It is much more useful if you put in all the birds you could identify
rather than just the unusual ones.
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| Fall migrants in Fish Bay - short-billed dowitcher and lesser yellowlegs Photo Gail Karlsson |
