MDOsprey,

Yesterday the third annual State of the Birds Report (2011) was
released at an event in Washington, D.C. and was announced publicly at
an event featuring Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar. This year’s
report highlights the enormous importance of public lands for bird
conservation in the United States. Much of this report is the direct
result of contributions of birders who enter their data into eBird.
Analysis of eBird data served as the foundation for the report and
highlights the type of contributions that we can make as individual
birders when we come together as a community.

You can read and download the entire report including the methods of
analyzing eBird data at the link below (Link on the left that says
"Our Approach"). There are also links to many of the maps used in
compiling the results. I encourage you to visit the site, read the
report, browse the amazing data, and consider the potential for
further breakthroughs as eBird data continue to multiply and analysis
techniques grow ever more sophisticated.

http://www.stateofthebirds.org/

Also in the report was the following "Thank You to eBird Volunteers"

"Our understanding of bird distributions has greatly improved thanks
to the thousands of bird watchers who have contributed observations to
eBird (www.eBird.org). This effort is especially important for
tracking seasonal and fine-scale changes in bird distributions, which
is not possible with other bird-monitoring programs. However, even
this massive observation network provides only imperfect information
for assessing the year-round status of birds on many remote public
lands across the U.S., including Alaska, Hawaii, and island
territories. We urge birders to submit more observations to eBird from
public refuges, parks, forests, and wilderness areas. We also urge
agencies to support the submission of current and historical records
to eBird and other data archives."

I hope that this report shows just the beginning of what we can
accomplish by sharing our observations in eBird and making them
available to the global community of researchers, educators, and
people working to conserve birds and their habitats.

To all of you who use eBird, thank you for making your bird
observations make a difference. If you haven't used eBird in a while
or never used it, it's never too soon to make eBird a habit. Feel free
to contact
me directly if you'd like to get started.

http://ebird.org/

Thank you,

Marshall Iliff & Team eBird

--
****************************
Marshall J. Iliff
miliff AT aol.com
West Roxbury, MA

(formerly of Annapolis, MD!)
****************************
eBird/AKN Project Leader
www.ebird.org
www.avianknowledge.net
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Ithaca, NY
****************************

--
****************************
Marshall J. Iliff
miliff AT aol.com
West Roxbury, MA
****************************
eBird/AKN Project Leader
www.ebird.org
www.avianknowledge.net
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Ithaca, NY
****************************

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