The India eBirding challenge for April 2015 is straightforward: simply upload 20 complete birdlists during the month. As in earlier monthly challenges, each list should be an effort-based, complete list, of at least 15 min duration
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Veteran eBirders may ask why we are setting such a simple task. Well, there are several answers. In the first place, we don’t always want to set such high targets that many birders may not be able to reach. 20 lists of at least 15 min duration each amounts to at least 5 hrs of birding during April. While this is not hard to reach, it’s also not trivially easy, especially accounting for the fact that April is a very hot month in many parts of the country!
Also, although this is not part of the target for April, we would like to encourage you to try out two additional things:
- Try making a regular bird list at the same location through the month — for example at your home or place of work. If possible, make these lists at approximately the same time of the day. This gives you an overall idea of what species you are likely (or unlikely) to see at that particular location; and also gives you an idea of whether on a single day, you can expect to see only 50% or as much as 90% of all birds seen at that location.
- April is breeding time for many species in many parts of India. However, the breeding distribution and timing of our species is still rather poorly known. Help document the locations and timing of breeding of birds by adding a suitable ‘breeding code’ whenever you see any signs of breeding. These codes are classified depending on the strength of evidence for breeding, from ‘Singing male’ (indicating possible breeding) to ‘Nest with young’ (indicating confirmed breeding). More information on these codes is available at this help page; and you can enter the appropriate code next to each species in your eBird list by clicking on ‘Add details’ and then ‘Breeding code’ as in the screenshot below.
Please upload all your lists by 5 May so that we can announce the results on 6 May. All birders who reach the target will be named and recognized on this website. One of these names will be chosen at random to receive a small birding-related gift in appreciation.
Here are the general rules of our monthly challenges. You can keep track of fresh lists coming in from India at this page.
Important. if you are new to eBird, please read this description first, and do take a look at the Beginner’s Guide.
Header Image: Eurasian Hobby Falco subbuteo © Pam Rasmussen/ Macaulay Libary
