North American Bird Phenology Program

08/25/2017

Gallinago delicata, Wyoming, Yellowstone National Park, Field Report File: Saw a Wilson snipe in a spring hold. Oct. 12. While resting near a duck pond I saw a Wilson snipe pickaxing for bugs. He was about six inches from shore and at each stroke his bill went in up to the eyes. The strokes were rapid, like those of a woodpecker. He covered a space perhaps 4 inches wide and 15 feet long in an hour, getting something every half dozen strokes or so. He was busy for two hours at least. Oct. 16. May 9-Nov. 7, 1913. M.P. Skinner (Card sent in by Judy Reynolds)

08/24/2017

DC/Baltimore CRICKET CRAWL 2017 is tomorrow night (8/25)! It only takes 1 minute (yes, literally only 60 seconds)- will YOU participate?

Learn how to observe and document the crickets and katydids in your area:
http://www.discoverlife.org/cricket/DC/

Discover Life...

07/30/2017

As many of you have already heard, Stella Walsh passed away recently. She has been our #1 Transcriber since the BPP started digitizing records back in 2008. She donated a tremendous amount of her time to our program driven by her passion for birds. She will be greatly missed.

For years we have put together a biography of an observer (one of the people who originally recorded the bird records back in the 1800s) for our monthly newsletter. For the first time, to honor Stella's memory, I would like to write a biography of our volunteer Stella, to send out to the BPP community and the larger birding community. If you knew Stella and could help us put that together, please PM me at [email protected]. If there are a few people, we can start a shared google doc.

07/13/2017

It's a bird...it's a plane...it's Jewett!

07/11/2017

The "Great Woodpeckers card". Sent in by Judy Reynolds.

07/04/2017

A new paper is out in the WJO using BPP data! Many of you will remember us asking transcribers to work on New York cards a few years back. Well, this is the direct outcome of that effort. Thank you for your contribution to understand the effects of climate change on birds. (http://wjoonline.org/doi/full/10.1676/16-026.1)

06/26/2017

Card transcribed and sent in by Judy Reynolds. "494 Dolichonyx oryzivorus Fort Myers, Fla. I beg to report the first observance of bobolinks in this section of Florida on August 9, 1916. My attention has been called to the appearance of bobolinks in a sunflower field some five miles below this city, near Buena vista, Lee County....and I made the trip there in my car to see for myself. I found the information to be correct, and there were possibly fifty birds in the flock. On the 31st August, 1914 I noted the first bobolinks of the season, and this after midnight on August 24, 1915, I noted the first flight of bobolinks at 8:10a.m., so the little birds are here rather sooner than usual this fall. I might add that the weather here has been delightfully cool for some time past. Letter of W. Stanley Hanson Aug. 21. 1916."

05/18/2017

All: It has been awhile, but we are gearing back up for greater coordination to complete the data entry phase of the Bird Phenology Program.

Here are some stats, as a starter.

621871 Cards have been validated and officially available in the database
420624 Cards have been transcribed at least once, but have not been validated for a variety of reasons.
14654 Cards have never been transcribed.

If I can figure out the program we are going to target transcribers to transcribing the 14,654 cards next.

thanks All...you will be hearing more from us!

sam

12/17/2015

With the help of some pre-holiday effort from everyone we've now finished online transcriptions for both Pennsylvania and Baltimore Orioles! Thank you everyone for your contributions!

12/03/2015

Office Volunteer Bob Hartman has been using the species helper application to track down species names for cards that didn't make it through the system due to a funky species name (ex: Northern Pintail being called a "Sprig"). Today Bob corrected his 30,000th record for us! Thank you Bob for the amazing contribution!

12/02/2015

Here's our November newsletter in case it didn't make it to ya!

11/30/2015

Great card find by Stella Walsh of some observers birding by stage coach. The Ford Model T only just went into production in late 1908, so it makes sense people may have been out spotting birds from their stage coach in the earlier years of the program!