Saturday, 1 August 2020

[Maine-birds] Maine Bird Atlas - Weekly Challenges, 8/1

Hi everyone:

Last week's results: 

The breeding season is winding down so I'll only be doing one more week of challenges. American Goldfinch is surprisingly difficult to confirm given how abundant they are, and almost all the 13 confirmed records submitted this week were in new blocks. 5 confirmed Indigo Bunting records gave a good bump to that species total. And we did it! We hit 30% Priority Blocks complete. This is a good milestone to hit but we've still got a long way to go and we'll only get there with your help. Congratulations to Jane from Cushing, Tom from Unity, and Reed from Portland for being chosen by Excel's random number generator as winners this week! 

Here are the challenges for this week: 

1) Hermit Thrush - Keep an eye out for this thrush, known to get late broods in. The other important part of this challenge is that we are exiting the safe dates for many species (Hermit Thrush ends 8/1) so you should no longer use Possible (S & H) or lower Probable (S7, M, & P) for those species. 

2) Priority Block Challenge - Find an incomplete Priority Block near you and work on confirmed breeding codes, especially for late nesting species. To track this challenge, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/tobv2xBvW82N3BAW9

3) Barred Owl - I've received a bunch of reports of calling juvenile Barred Owls (usually misidentified as similar sounding Barn Owls) lately, and in many cases these are still young birds dependent on adults, which can be coded FL - Recently Fledged Young.

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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