Bird Geek News

I'm a bird geek. I love wild birds (not tame ones, though... Parrots and I haven't had good experiences). I keep a bird feeder and a seed pile to keep my feathery friends fat and sassy, and in turn, they come by and keep me amused.

In my birding and bird research wanders on the net, I came across eBird. From their white paper "What is eBird?", they answer the question by saying: "A real-time, online checklist program, eBird has revolutionized the way that the birding community reports and accesses information about birds. Launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, eBird provides rich data sources for basic information on bird abundance and distribution at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. "

I've been submitting my sightings of unusual birds ever since, but I never realized how much anyone was paying attention until today. This morning I got an e-mail from someone at Cornell, asking me to verify a sighting of lesser goldfinches that I'd entered a couple weeks ago. Huzzah! Lesser goldfinches are rare, and it's rare that they are identified correctly even when someone says they've seen them. So I spent part of the morning submitting exact observation notes to prove that I saw what I said I saw. In addition, I mentioned a data submission from last fall that no one ever verified, and now he's interested in that data as well. Two species that have never been sighted in my area before are now on record as being here. Yay.

So, as geeky as it may be, that's my big news for the day. Now if I can just get those darned Northern Phalaropes to stop by the pond again, I'll be able to prove I've seen them, too.

:End Geek: ;o)