With us all hunkered down at home, there has been a worldwide spike in eBird.org observations by citizen scientists. If you’re one of those staying home with more time to gaze out the window, wander in the yard, or play in the garden, consider starting your own list of yard birds and contribute to the eBird database of avian observations.
Have a look at “Discover the Birds in Your Yard and Garden” (https://ebird.org/news/discover-the-birds-in-your-yard-or-garden).
Here are some additional tips…
- Report all the birds you could identify. And don’t report the ones you couldn’t. That’s perfectly OK. All of us see or hear birds we can’t identify for a wide variety of reasons.
- Select the “Stationary” observation type if you spent time focused only on birding and you didn’t wander more than about 30 yards.
- Select “Incidental” type if you were focused on another task, like gardening or working on a project, but you want to report the birds you saw and heard.
- Select “Traveling” if you were focused on watching birds, but wandered more than 30 yards, like when you were taking a walk.