It’s April, which means that in most parts of India, breeding has begun or will begin very soon for many species. The air is filled with bird sounds and a lot of birders are keen to document interesting breeding behaviors through photographs and sound recordings. Your observations and photos contributed through eBird have made it possible for Merlin to identify over 1000 Indian bird species.
The challenge for this month is to upload 20 or more rated photos or audio recordings to your April 2022 checklists. It does not matter how many checklists you upload as long as they are *eligible checklists. All participants are encouraged to rate as many media as possible, not just yours or your friends but also unrated media in eBird/ Macaulay Library.
Instructions on media ratings:
Upload media (photographs and/or sound recordings) to your eBird checklist and request your eBirder friends to rate your media.
You can also rate your own media and it is perfectly fine to do so.
Read here to know more about rating photographs and sound recordings.
Please note that if you forget to rate your media then your lists will not be counted for the challenge.
Useful tips & resources
- Check out this quick video guide on how to upload photographs to your eBird list.
- Check out this quick video guide on how to record and prepare your audio before uploading it to your checklist.
- Whenever you see birds showing any signs of breeding, choose the breeding behaviour codes. To do this in the eBird App, tap the species name, tap on ‘Add breeding code‘, and select the appropriate purple circle that is closest to your observation (see the example below). (Please note again, F and H are not breeding codes).
While birding, please ensure that you adhere to COVID-19 related instructions by central and local authorities.
Please upload all your lists by 10 May 2022 so that we can announce the results soon after that.
* Eligible checklists are those that report all species seen/heard (and are therefore marked ‘complete’), report numbers for all species rather than Xs, and are of at least 15 minutes or longer in duration.
Here are the general rules of our monthly challenges. And check out the yearlong challenges for 2022 as well!
A list of challenges at the global level can be seen here. See here to know about the global eBirding challenge for April.
For those new to eBird, read the brief description, and go through our detailed beginner’s guide; create an account and start using eBird right away to get used to the platform.
Header Image: White-tailed Iora (Marshall’s Iora) Aegithina nigrolutea ©Chidananda Urs/ Macaulay Library
