[Maine-birds] Maine Bird Atlas - Weekly Challenges, 7/18

Hi everyone:

Last week's results:

I know House Sparrow was not the most charismatic of challenges, but still important and we added five new confirmed blocks! And good work on the "hard" challenge of confirming Chimney Swifts: three confirmed reports added two new blocks. Keep working on them, I think this is easier than most people realize. Talk about saving best for last… an amazing 36 Priority Blocks were completed this week!! That brings us up to 23% complete, a nice jump closer to our goal of 30% by the end of the season. Keep targeting those Priority Blocks! Congratulations to Scott in Industry, Sandi from Hudson, and Weston from Topsham for being chosen by Excel's random number generator as winners this week!

Here are the challenges for this week:

1) Common Loon - I'm a little biased because Maine Audubon's annual Loon Count is this weekend, but what better time to be on the water and looking for chicks! Beware of block boundaries on larger lakes and do your best to code them in the blocks they nested in. Here is the current map if you need inspiration of new places to look: https://ebird.org/atlasme/map/comloo

2) Priority Block Challenge - Repeating this from last week because this is our priority for the project: We really need volunteers spending time competing Priority Blocks. Take a look at the Atlas Effort Map (https://ebird.org/atlasme/effortmap), find a priority block, go atlasing a morning or two this week, revisit 7+ days later to easily bump possible to probable records, and you're making great progress to completing the block! To track this challenge, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/tobv2xBvW82N3BAW9

3) Bay-breasted Warbler - another hard one for our Boreal birders. Bay-Breasted Warbler has only been confirmed in 9 blocks, can we crack double-digits for them this week?

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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