Shorebirders and the shorebirds are ready for the biggest synchronised shorebird counting event of the year. The Global Shorebird Counting Program proved to be a successful event of first World Shorebird Day and the interest is increasing among birdwatchers and conservationists for the next weekend’s counting. Bellow I share some technical information about the know how.
Counting
One of the most common misunderstanding about this program that it was considered to be a competition. The Global Shorebird Counting is not a competition and never will be. We’ve got a couple of comments that counting wasn’t carried out because only a few birds were present at the selected site. Counters didn’t feel it useful to submit data to eBird saying there are much busier sites. Should you live near an important shorebird site counting thousands of shorebirds, or just along a river or at an inland lake counting solitary shorebirds is equally important. Why? Global Shorebird Counting is about promoting monitoring of shorebird populations through regular counting. Citizen science programmes have brought amazing results on movements and distributions of birds in the last decade. Be a part of it, whatever level of importance of your site has.
Data submission
We all use the widely accessible eBird. In early 2015 a brand new and FREE eBird app was unveiled by the eBird Team which is already very popular among iOS users. The previously used BirdsEye BirdLog app is still available in app stores for Android. Both apps are connected to eBird. Please follow eBird instructions to create an account, if you don’t have one, and follow instructions to add records. Last year it went quite well.
Steps
Create an account (if you already have an eBird account you don’t need to create a new account!).
Tell more about yourself in the next page (Please don’t skip this step! At least add your city and country.)
Visit the link about a quick start guide to be sent by eBird after registration complete.
Start submitting the first checklist (list of species counted on a location, on a certain day). I recommend starting to use eBird with submitting a few own field records from the near past, to get used to its platform and structure.
In case you have a smartphone, data submission is easier by using the eBird app.
Please add to the comment field: World Shorebirds Day (only for the checklists made during the World Shorebirds Day weekend)
Data sharing
To make your submitted data visible to World Shorebirds Day, checklists is kindly asked to be shared. Please add the worldshorebirdsday eBird username of World Shorebirds Day (WorldShorebirdsDay) or shorebirdsday@gmail.com email address, to your contact list, and share all your related checklists with us (only the checklists made during the World Shorebirds Day weekend between 4–6 September 2015). There is a guideline, how to do this, here.
List of shorebirds
Please find out what species are considered to be shorebirds.
Still having questions? Please don’t hesitate to send us an e-mail.
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