Online birding program reaches major milestone
By Patricia Leonard
Birders have been flocking to eBird, www.ebird.org, a free, year-round, online checklist program that takes in bird observations from all of North America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. The website logged its one-millionth checklist in December, a report submitted by John Beetham of Highland Park, New Jersey. Beetham reported 34 species from Liberty State Park, including 60 snow buntings and one lingering ruby-crowned kinglet.
Snow Bunting.
Launched in 2002, eBird is coordinated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society with sponsorship from Carl Zeiss Sports Optics (which presented the lucky Beetham with a pair of binoculars). Approximately 30,000 people now contribute their sightings to eBird.
“We've grown tremendously,” says eBird project co-leader Christopher Wood, a research support specialist at the Lab of O. “Just three years ago we took in about 5,000 checklists each month. Now we're up to about 50,000 a month. All eBird sightings become part of a huge database that anyone can explore using maps and charts focusing on the entire continent, a region, or even their own back yard.”
eBird leaders continue to expand the project's reach and to find new ways to make the data available for bird conservation. For example, eBird reports are among the data being used to compare populations of seabirds before and after a recent oil spill in San Francisco Bay. The high level of participation in eBird should also reveal more about the sporadic southward movement of birds from the far north of the continent, such as Bohemian waxwings and pine grosbeaks. One of the largest irruptions in years is taking place this winter.
Stephen Ingraham of Zeiss calls eBird “a groundbreaking effort to harness the observations of birders for science and conservation. At Carl Zeiss Sports Optics we believe that people who are serious about observing nature can make a difference in our understanding of nature and in our ability to conserve the natural world around us,” he says. “Our partnership with eBird is part of our larger commitment to both conservation and citizen science.”
It's important for birders to be involved with projects such as eBird because of the vulnerable status of many species, says Ingraham, adding, “I feel that our reports can help pinpoint problems while there is time to fix them.”