Counting Birds with a Board

In today's post, Fenner Youth Leadership member, Nathan Martineau, writes about the new dry-erase board that will be used to improve Fenner's daily bird sighting records. Come to the Center and jot down your daily sightings today!

Those who have visited Fenner recently may have noticed a dry erase board to their

right as they walked through the front doors of the nature center. This new board

has been erected for the purpose of improving Fenner’s bird records. Although

there was a good system of keeping bird records as recently as 2010, daily bird

sightings at the park have not been recorded for the past couple of years. The board

is hopefully a solution.

This dry erase board is essentially a chart that allows anyone to record bird

sightings, along with the number of each bird species, during their time at Fenner.

If you are the first person that day to see a particular species, simply write the

number of that species you saw, or mark an “x” if you saw the species, but did not

count how many there were. If someone has already reported that species in larger

numbers than you saw, you don’t need to enter your count. If someone has reported

a species in smaller numbers, or has only marked an ‘x”, erase that count and write

yours in.

(Northern Cardinal, courtesy of allaboutbirds.org)

If you see a species that is not on the bulletin board, it is probably because it is

rare or very uncommon at that season. In this case, just write it in at the bottom

of the list. In months with particularly long bird lists, such as May and September

(the peak of spring and fall migrations), some of the most common species like

Black-capped Chickadee, Northern Cardinal and Blue Jay, will be left off the list to

accommodate for all of the migrant species coming through during that window of

time. These species are extremely common and should be spotted every day here at

Fenner, so it would be helpful to write down in the “NOTES” section if you don’t see

one of these expected species during your visit.

(Black-capped Chickadee, courtesy of ohio-nature.com)

The board covers a period of two weeks and is updated every other Sunday,

with the list of expected birds varying with the time of year. Accordingly, the list

becomes longer during migration and shorter in summer and winter.

(Blue Jay, courtesy of fcps.edu)

For those birders who have an account on the online bird records database, eBird,

there is another way to contribute to Fenner’s bird records: just share your eBird

checklist from Fenner with the username “Fenner NC.”

If you have any questions, shoot me an email at miyoungbirder@gmail.com.