[Update: to count, your list must be shared with another person’s account; lists shared only with group accounts are ineligible.]
It’s December already, how time flies! To mark the last month of 2014, and to set the stage for a wonderful new birding year in 2015, this month’s eBirding Challenge is a bit different. So while you are finishing uploading your lists for November’s challenge (deadline: 5th Nov), do start on the challenge for December — which is to upload at least 20 ‘shared’ lists during the month.
Although solitary birding brings its own rewards, winter is a great time to bird with your friends and family. Perhaps they are already watch birds, and if not maybe you can introduce them to the joys of birding. Either way, when you do go birding with others, what better way to make the experience stay in memory than to upload the trip list to eBird and ‘share’ it with those who were with you. In eBird, to share a list is to make a copy into your friend’s account — so only share with those who accompanied you on your trip!
If you are unfamiliar with list sharing in eBird, please do read through this overview first.
The target for December is for at least 20 of your lists during the month to be ‘shared’ with your birding companions. As in earlier challenges, each list should be an effort-based, complete list, of at least 15 min in duration
. Do remember that all people on a shared list get credit for that list. So, for example, if A and B go birding together and A shares the list with B, then both of them get a tally of 1 against their name towards the December challenge.
Why emphasize shared lists? Well, many reasons. We have noticed that many trip lists have lots of people (in eBird: “Number of people in your birding party”), but are not shared with them. This misses a great opportunity for everyone who went birding to open their ‘bird account’ in eBird.
Also, occasionally there are people who went birding together who upload separate lists. Instead, if one person does the initial upload and then shares with others it saves effort, and also tags all shared lists as coming from the same birding trip, which is important for generating meaningful output from the data, including maps and seasonal barcharts.
Finally, we would like to encourage everyone to introduce new people to birding — whether colleagues, friends or family: please do so and then share the lists with them, so that they also become part of our collective effort to document India’s birds!
Please upload all your December lists by 5 January so that we can announce the results on 6 January. 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: Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker Dicaeum cruentatum © ijay Anand Ismavel/ Macaulay Library/ IBC
