[Maine-birds] join the Global Big Day - May 9th

Dear Maine birders,

Let's do a big day with the rest of the world. For its centennial this year, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology big day team, the Sapsuckers, is inviting everyone around the world to join together to count as many species as possible and support bird conservation through this fundraiser.

Details about the Global Big Day are here: http://ebird.org/globalbigday/

The best thing you will find on that page is a map of the world filled with birds painted by Maine native, Luke Seitz, who has nestled species into the shape of their respective core continents. His map is available to download (see link on the web site), and the all-important donation links are there too.

To join in the Global Big Day, simply enter your observations for May 9th into eBird (ebird.org). I would be happy to help; so don't hesitate to write me with questions. This is also International Migratory Bird Day; so many of us will be participating in birding events around the state. Just keep track and log your birds into eBird.

Obviously Maine does not have any endemic species to contribute to the global total, but perhaps we could get some local competition going. It's not fair to challenge Aroostook birders with the diversity that York County can muster on an early May date, but perhaps some paired county competitions might be fun, e.g. York versus Cumberland, Hancock versus Washington, or Lincoln versus Sagadahoc.

Good birding to all!

Louis Bevier

Fairfield

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Excerpt from: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/gbd2015_1/

For more than 30 years, Cornell's Team Sapsucker has been doing Big Days to raise money for conservation. We've had some great times, from our awesome 294 species run in Texas (http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/294/) to last year's El Gigante that combined Arizona and California for 275 species. Other impressive totals and competitions we may prefer to forget (Andrew Farnsworth is leading Marshall Iliff 2 to 1 for most flat tires while driving on the Lab Big Days). The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Big Day efforts have also provided an ideal way for our student teams, the Redheads, to fundraise for student research as they participate in the World Series of Birding. Big Days are a big deal for us – raising more than a million dollars for conservation in the last three years alone.

But what's next?  With the Cornell Lab's centennial in 2015, we have decided to make some big changes to the Big Day. Most important of these is to expand the team—drastically—this year. For 2015 we invite everyone around the world to join us in an attempt to see as many species as possible on a single calendar day. 3000 species? 4000?  More? With a little planning and outreach, could we document half the species in the world? The success of the project will depend on all of you and how many others you can help get excited about this single day celebration of bird diversity.

Mark your calendars for 9 May 2015 for the first ever Global Big Day on International Migratory Bird Day and start spreading the word among your friends.

Although we'll all be members of the global team—Team eBird—rest assured that Team Sapsucker will stay intact. This year we will head to Panama to spend our day birding along the Panama Canal and nearby areas. We'll be joined by a close friend of ours, Carlos Bethancourt, from the Canopy Tower, who'll help us track down trickier Panama endemics like Stripe-cheeked Woodpecker and Yellow-green Tyrannulet (we can dare to dream, right?). The Canopy Tower has also graciously offered to provide a base camp and to cover our expenses in Panama. The Redheads will return to New Jersey for the World Series of Birding. Brian Sullivan will be sitting out this year, instead focusing on coordinating global efforts from his home in California.

We hope that you can make it out to see what birds you can find on 9 May. This year is a little different from past Big Days, because we are interested in the cumulative total from around the world. This means, if you are in Brazil there are 253 species that can't be found anywhere else. India 57; Australia 347; Puerto Rico 16; Hawaii 33; California 2. Part of this effort will be to organize people to go and look for particular species to see what we can find together. Who will get Island Scrub-Jay? How about Gunnison Sage-Grouse? Or Scarlet-banded Barbet? But even at more local scales, try setting target numbers for your state or county and let's try to see how high your local teams can push the total.

Our hope is some miniature good-natured competitions may develop as well – who will record more species, Mexico or India? New York or Massachusetts? Monterey County or San Diego County? The main differences between this and other Big Days, is that we are interested in the number of species we can see by working together – that is, after all, the idea behind eBird.

This year, we are challenging ourselves to raise $500,000 to support conservation work at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, including eBird. In the long run, we hope to develop this event as a global fundraiser for all our partners working on bird conservation. In the same way the Cornell Lab fundraises, we hope you can use this event to help develop a culture of philanthropy among your audiences. In this first year, we are focusing on outreach and building the overall species list, but we'd like to explore local fundraising with you in the future.

We will be using the hashtag #GlobalBigDay and hope you will use it in discussing this on social media. We recognize that this is not the ideal date for birding all around the world, but we needed to start somewhere. Please let us know if you have any questions. 

Thanks,

Chris, Marshall, Brian, Tim, Jessie, Andrew, and Ian

Regional Events: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/gbd2015-events/