As we enter the newest month of 2017, its time for a new eBirding challenge to take part in! The challenge for December was to upload at least 31 checklists from the month. For January, we focus on both birding effort as well as media uploads. One of the most valuable tools in 2016 has been the ability to add of media (explore media here) to checklists. Not only do media help make checklists more illustrative and pretty, they also add great value to the documentation and overall repository of images and audio.
The challenge this month is to upload at least 25 effort-based, no-X, complete 
checklists of at least 15 minutes duration. All birders meeting this target will be recognized, and from among their lists, one list containing rich media will be drawn at random to choose who receives a small gift in appreciation.
Do look through this guide to uploading media on eBird to understand the process. You can upload either images or audio, but keep in mind the following things:
a. The media uploaded must be from the time and location of the particular birdlist.
b. Embedded media doesn’t get added to the Macaulay Library’s archive so lists with media embedded from third party sites (like Flickr) do not count for this challenge.
c. The media uploaded should be of sufficient quality so that the species in question is identifiable.
If you do not have a good camera/audio recording equipment, don’t feel hindered! Even a point and shoot camera can take good record shots and you can get very good results even by taking images with your phone through a scope or binoculars. Phones are also very good devices for recording audio. So do give it a try!
The Gap-filling Challenge, announced in November, continues this month. The Gap-filling Challenge this month (January 2017) is to upload a minimum of 4 complete checklists of at least 15 minutes duration each from one or more of the districts from the list of 300 districts that have 30 minutes or less of birding represented on eBird for January.
You can download the list of target districts in any of the following formats: CSV XLS PDF
Please upload all your lists by 5 February so that we can announce the results the next day.
Here are the general rules of our monthly challenges. And check out the yearlong challenges as well! 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: Laggar Falcon Falco jugger © Jugal Tiwari/ Macaulay Library/ IBC
