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Join us for the IOU Meeting in Dubuque November 10-12
A wonderful Fall IOU Meeting has been planned. It’s time to begin preparing to attend.
The Holiday Inn, Dubuque is offering a special room rate of $99/night. To receive this rate the reservation must be made by 10/11/17. The phone number is 563-556-2000.
Click here to register for the meeting.
Details for the meeting and the meeting schedule can be found by clicking here.
More details will be filled in soon on the website.
The Field Trips should be especially good in this wonderful birdy part of Iowa. Field Trips are planned to:
Deere Dike- With target birds of Common Loon, Horned Grebe, Snowy Egret, Greater White-fronted Goose, and Black Scoter. Tundra Swan, Snow Goose and Northern Shrike are also possible.
Mines of Spain-With target species of Barred Owl, Red-headed and Pileated Woodpeckers, Tufted Titmouse, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper, Carolina and Winter Wrens and various sparrow species. Golden Eagle is seen occasionally migrating south along the river corridor in the Fall.
Swiss Valley Nature Preserve-This preserve is a migrant trap for passerines during the autumn. Well-stocked feeders at the nature center attract all the resident seed-eaters as well as wintering White-crowned Sparrows and Purple Finches. Target species include Pileated Woodpecker, Belted Kingfisher, Winter Wren, Hermit Thrush and Fox Sparrow.
Dubuque City Limits- There will be several stops to scope the river for loons, grebes, swans, waterfowl and wintering gulls. If time permits, a stop will be made at Eagle Point Park to scan the bluffs for migrating raptors and scour the woodlands for migrating sparrows and thrushes.
Potosi Recreational Area (offered on Saturday only)-Target species include Greater White-fronted Geese, Snow Geese, Trumpeter and Tundra Swans.
Green Island/Sabula (offered on Sunday only)- Target species are swans, geese, ducks, loons, grebes, mergansers, scoters and gulls.
Amar Ayyash will be the featured speaker Saturday evening. His talk will be “Learning Gull Identification-Demystifying the Mysterious”. It will be a tremendous opportunity to hear all about gulls from one of the world’s gull experts. I also hear that he will discuss the recent lumping of Thayer’s Gull with Iceland Gull.
The Case for eBird
By Linda Rudolph
(printed previously in the ICBC newsletter with some modifications)
eBird is a worldwide internet resource that is supported by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon. Birders can enter their sightings and these will generate many different lists for their own personal use (Country, State, County, Yard, any Location, and Life and Year). There are bar charts, maps, photos and many other types of resources for the average birder to use. eBird can be essential in planning a birding trip to an unknown area. More importantly, the data provided has contributed to science and conservation.
How many people contribute to eBird? You might be amazed to know that just in the United States 50,370 checklists were entered in the first 7 days of October.
Entering your sightings
To enter a list of bird sightings on your computer, you need to know where you were, the date, time, how long you were birding, the number of each individual bird species you saw and if you traveled, the distance you went. Consider giving it a try and go to:
>eBird.org
>Submit Observations
>Create your account and sign in
>Here you need to enter your location. eBird has Hotspots, which are frequently birded areas. It is best to use a Hotspot if that’s where you were. You can also create Personal Locations, or use someone else’s Personal Location.
> Let’s assume for our purposes that you went birding at Hickory Hill Park in Iowa City. Find the area by entering “Johnson, Iowa” in the “Find it on a Map” box. Zoom in on the map and you will see a brown flame at Hickory Hill Park. Click on the flame and press “Continue”
> Enter the date, time, observation type (such as Traveling or Stationary), start time, the amount of time you spent birding, the distance you drove or walked (for Traveling) and press “Continue”
> Your cursor will be over on the right in a blue box. Here you can enter the species name and then enter the number of birds you saw. For example, you could type in “red” and all the choices starting with red pop up. Select the species (such as Red-bellied Woodpecker) and enter the number you saw.
>Once you are done entering all the species, select either yes or no for “Are you submitting a complete checklist…?”
>Press Submit.
You have just entered your first list. Congratulations!
Exploring the Website
Now let’s explore the website a little more. On the home page, at the lower right, you can see photos of birds that are considered rare in their location and have been attached to eBird entries. Click on the first photo and more information about it pops up. You can then scroll through the photos.
Next select the “Explore Data” tab. There are more ways to use this page than this article has space for, but here are a few.
How can you know what other birders are seeing in your area?
>Select “Explore a Region”
>Enter “Johnson, Iowa”. Checklist entries appear with the most recent being first.
>Hover over the pin-shaped symbol on a checklist (it’s between the date and the birder). The location of the sighting pops up.
>Click on the pin of a hotspot area sighting and the map in the upper right-hand corner will show you the location of the hotspot.
I use “Explore a Region” to plan a trip to an unknown area. For example, let’s say you were going to visit Sierra Vista, Arizona for a week. Sierra Vista is in Cochise County. Go to:
>Explore a Region>Cochise, Arizona. Now all the recent sightings pop up.
>Look on the right-hand side of the page and scroll down until you get to “Top Hotspots”. Here is the mother lode of useful information for trip planning.
>Click on the first hotspot. The map in the upper right shows you exactly where it is, and the lists show you what birds are being seen there.
Go back to the first page of the “Explore Data” tab. Do you want to know where Eurasian Tree Sparrows are being seen?
>Select “Species Maps”. Enter the information and a map will appear. The purple areas are where the species has been reported.
>Zoom in and keep zooming in until flames appear. Click on a flame and the checklists that report the species are displayed.
As you can see, getting started in eBird is easy, and it can provide you and other birders with useful information.
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