[meetyeti] Great Backyard Bird Count in two weeks!

From: Suhel Quader <suhelq@xxxxxxxxx>
To: meetyeti@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 20:37:22 +0530
Dear young ecologists,

Forwarding an announcement about the GBBC, Feb 14-17. My apologies if you
have received this message already from another source.

Best wishes,
Suhel


------------------------------
The Great Backyard Bird Count--India is back! The dates are 14-17 February
2014. Join in this global birding event.

--Resources--
*Beginner's guide to eBird*: http://bit.ly/1eIicDK
*Smartphone app for eBird*: http://bit.ly/1b9xcZ4 (for iPhone and android;
free until 17 Feb)
--

*WHAT*
GBBC is a worldwide event. Last year birders from 111 countries took part,
counting around 35 million individual birds of 4,000 species. Indian
birders submitted 400+ lists of 500+ species. You can see a summary of
the global results here
http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/science-stories/2013summary
and the India results here
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwpQkYOLo9ZdcjFKZXEtMmhLVlk/edit?usp=sharing


*WHY*
Most importantly, it's fun! More seriously, these annual snapshots of bird
populations help to answer a variety of important questions, including how
birds are affected by habitat changes and weather, and whether populations
and distributions are changing. More details are here:
http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/whycount.html

*WHEN*
Any or all days between 14 and 17 February 2014

*HOW*
Go birding for at least 15 min, listing all the species you see, with rough
count of each. It doesn't matter if you can't identify every single species
-- what you can identify is good enough! Login to http://www.ebird.org/ and
submit your species list.

More details at http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/howto.html

In brief:
1. Go to http://www.ebird.org/ and create an account (Do familiarise
yourself).
2. Select your location on a map.
3. Choose kind of count you have made (e.g. travelling or stationary).
4. Give start time and duration.
5. Enter your list.
6. Share your list with others via email, Facebook or Twitter. Some
examples of lists from 2013 are here:
http://ebird.org/ebird/gbbc/view/checklist?subID=S13006470
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S13006074
http://ebird.org/ebird/gbbc/view/checklist?subID=S12979749

As in 2013, this year again people all over India are participating. Some
are also organizing small events at local parks or lakes for the public,
including children, to take part in the count and learn more about birds.

If you are feeling ambitious, your local birder/naturalist group could use
GBBC to carry out a more formal project. For example, you could ask "what
is the importance of green/open spaces for urban birds?" To answer this,
one could organise groups to go out and generate one set of lists from
open/green spaces (eg, wetlands, parks); and another set of lists from from
other kinds of city habitats: commercial areas, residential areas --
basically, highly built-up areas. Then one could ask how many and which
species are restricted to open/green spaces, and how many appear to be
adaptable and occur also in other city habitats. A possible conclusion
could be "Green spaces are essential for the survival of 60% of [your
city's] birds". With some planning and enough birders, such a project would
be possible to do in the four days of the GBBC.

Regardless of what you plan, do consider joining this Google group:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21forum/birdcountindia
which exists so that we can keep each other informed of our plans, as well
share what we see with fellow birders during the days of the Count.

You can also join us for updates on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/449287601838394/

Looking forward to seeing you at GBBC-2014!

Bird Count India
https://www.facebook.com/birdcount.india
https://twitter.com/birdcountindia
[meetyeti] Great Backyard Bird Count in two weeks!

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