Hi everyone, As I think just about everyone on this list knows, there are a couple of places that I really like to go birding -- Myers Point and Monkey Run (particularly our yard). I've spent a bit of time discussing the fun of doing repeated surveys of these locations, both in terms of finding rarities, but more importantly to me, the fun of getting to really know a place.
We've built a couple of new tools in eBird for keeping track of some of your favorite places that are available under View and Explore Data. One, called "Patch Totals", allows you to bring together a series of different eBird locations to keep track of a "patch". So for Myers Point, I can include both Myers Point and the Myers Point Marina. And for Monkey Run, I can include the 8 different locations where I submit checklists. I can also go in and see the latest checklist where Tim Lenz saw a new bird (either for the current year, month or his lifetime) for Stewart Park, the Main Pool at Montezuma or any of his other patches. Part of the fun of this is to keep track of the birds you see from your yard and see what others are seeing. Take a look at the link below for a handful of people who are already playing here in Tompkins County. http://ebird.org/ebird/site/yard?locInfo.regionType=subnational2&locInfo.regionCode=US-NY-109 Hopefully others will adopt one or more local patches and see how many birds we can find next year. Find out more here: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/home/about/yard-patch_rules Cheers, Chris Wood eBird & Neotropical Birds Project Leader Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York http://ebird.org http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
