Introducing the eBird Site Survey

Your favorite birding location can help us understand bird populations

By Mike Powers

Steve Stedman has submitted to eBird nearly a decade's worth of bird sightings from Cane Creek Park in Tennessee. Photo by Janie C. Finch

How can dedicated amateur ornithologists make an important contribution to our understanding of birds and their environments? If you have a favorite place to watch birds throughout the seasons, you can help by participating in the new eBird Site Survey.

Whether your favorite locale is your backyard, a route through your neighborhood, or a nearby park, the eBird Site Survey maximizes the scientific value of your observations by asking you to make repeated visits and collect data the same way each time. Your records will help document the changes in birds at your location through time and allow comparisons of your area with places from around the continent.

The eBird Site Survey gives you the flexibility to decide where, when, how often, and for how long to survey, and you can choose whether to search a specific area, walk a route, or stay in one place. After collecting your data, you?ll find it easy to enter your sightings using a standard checklist at eBird www.ebird.org, an innovative web site developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon. With a press of the button, you?ll send your checklist to a centralized database, where the observations become part of an inventory of North American birdlife.

Many bird watchers have already taken the site-survey approach to eBird. Since 2002, June Southwick has submitted eBird checklists from her daily walk along a lake near Lacey, Washington. Her observations show how the bird composition changes with the seasons. For example, Varied Thrushes are winter visitors that arrive as early as October and linger until April. In contrast, Purple Finches generally arrive in mid-March, stay to breed, and depart in early August.

Nine years of sightings from Steve Stedman in Cookeville, Tennessee, and four years from Steve Kelling in Caroline, New York, show the timing of the Yellow Warbler arrivals and departures as the birds move northward in spring and southward in the fall. Frequencies indicate the percentage of checklists recording the species during five-day periods.

Steve Stedman, another eBird participant, has submitted more than 900 checklists from Cane Creek Park in Cookeville, Tennessee. Steve has visited the park once or twice a month for nearly a decade. His records of 209 species show how often these birds are seen and the times of the year when they can be expected, providing a wealth of information about birdlife in the park.

With records of the same species from multiple participants, we can piece together a larger picture of the movements of birds. For example, Steve Kelling, the Lab of Ornithology?s director of Information Technologies, has recorded the birds from his property in Caroline, New York, at least once per week since 2000. By comparing his sightings of Yellow Warblers with those recorded by Steve Stedman in Cookeville, Tennessee, we can see how Yellow Warblers move into and out of these areas during migration (Figure 1).

Perhaps the most important way you can contribute to the eBird Site Survey is by continuing to participate over time. The value of your data increases with each visit as you accumulate long-term records. As the database grows, we will be able to create detailed maps showing the distribution and abundance of birds at any time of year. We?ll be able to document where the birds are increasing or decreasing. We?ll also be able to investigate how environmental changes, such as global warming, influence the arrival dates or wintering ranges of North American birds. We hope you?ll add your location to eBird?s growing database and help us answer broad-scale questions about the ebb and flow of bird populations through time.

Participating in the eBird Site Survey is simple. Just register your location at the eBird Site Survey www.ebird.org/content/news/essintro.html, then follow the protocol to record your sightings and submit them to eBird.

Mike Powers is project leader for eBird.

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu