Hi everyone:
Time for Week Two of challenges for the Maine Bird Atlas. See my original post if you need more background on these: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/maine-birds/Xa2xS_JuIS0/Uf0PcLAhAgAJ
If you are new to the Atlas, it is a project by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife that partners with Maine biologists and citizen scientists to document the distribution and relative abundance of all breeding and wintering birds across the entire state of Maine. You can learn more about the atlas, and find materials including the Volunteer Handbook here: maine.gov/birdatlas
A quick reminder: Please submit only eBird checklists that have at least one breeding code to the Maine Bird Atlas Portal (ebird.org/atlasme). All lists that do not have breeding codes should be entered to eBird (ebird.org) or the Maine eBird Portal (ebird.org/me).
Let's look at how we did last week:
Canada Goose - The goal was to find more blocks with confirmed breeding and we got four new ones! These came from a total of 33 confirmed reports and is an impressive effort since that puts us at 231 confirmed blocks. Still plenty of time to find those occupied nests or downy chicks.
American Crow - The goal of submitting confirmed codes was completed by 11 different people, collectively reporting 12 confirmed records. Shout out to the additional 19 people who added to our total this week with 8 probable, and 20 possible records. Awesome job!
Northern Cardinal - Submitting any code was your task here and you were up to the challenge! 46 observers collectively reported 25 possible, 62 probable, and 2 confirmed codes over the past week! This is a great early effort with this species, now let's see if we can bump some of those probables up to confirmed.
I'll wait for last minute entries to pick the winner of our swag give-away from the Maine Bird Atlas online store: teepublic.com/user/mainebirdatlas/ but I wanted to give a quick tip-of-the-hat to the 134 people who submitted qualifying entries this week. We had great state-wide coverage with reports coming from 14 different counties (only Franklin and Piscataquis were not represented).
Here are the challenges for this week:
Downy Woodpecker - Starting off with an easy species. The safe dates began on May 1st so all codes can be submitted. Your goal this week is to report probable or confirmed codes. Many woodpeckers are still excavating cavities (coded B-Woodpecker/Wren Nest Building) but we now have a nest with young at Gilsland Farm so time for those confirmed codes to start rolling in, at least in southern Maine.
Virginia Rail - These secretive birds are really difficult to confirm breeding but with some effort can at least get up to probable. Your goal for this week is to code singing birds and then keep in mind that it only takes hearing those individuals 7 or more days later to get them up to probable. Read more about these and special surveys for the atlas in their species account (link below).
Gray Catbird - This may be a trickier one… The safe date for Gray Catbird doesn't begin until June 1st because migrants are still passing through parts of the state. However, some of the earlier arrivals are already beginning to settle in - I found my first catbird nest of the year earlier this week. So remember the rules about safe dates: All possible codes (S, and H) and some probable codes (S7, M, and P) should only be used within the safe dates. All other codes supersede safe dates.
To help you know what to look for, I've written species accounts to accompany these challenges. These are not comprehensive but should help identify some of the breeding behaviors that you are most likely to encounter for each species. The species accounts are available here: ebird.org/atlasme/about/species-profiles
Anyone who completes one of the challenges above will be entered to win any item of their choice (any product, style, color, size, etc) from the Maine Bird Atlas online store: teepublic.com/user/mainebirdatlas/. One entry per person per challenge (complete them all for 3x the chances of winning) from checklists submitted by 11:59PM on 24 May 2019.
Good birding and happy atlasing!
Doug Hitchcox
Maine Bird Atlas - Outreach Coordinator
Maine Audubon - Staff Naturalist
207-781-2330 x237
dhitchcox@maineaudubon.org
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