January 2022 eBirders of the Month

Start of the new year, there was a big uptick seen in birding activity. This could be due to Asian Wetland Census planned across the country. Before moving on to the results for the monthly challenge, here is a brief glimpse of birding in January by-the-numbers (with the previous month in brackets)

No. of birders: 4,056 (3,522)

Number of observations: 8.4 lakh (6.6 lakh)

Number of lists (all types): 41,161 (32,401)

Number of species: 1,077 (1,081)

Number of lists with media: 4,840 (5,369)

January Challenge:

The challenge for January was to upload eligible checklists of a minimum of 15 minutes from at least 3 different wetlands and to be shared with the eBird username: awcindia.  A total of 38 birders met the target. (These are excluding group accounts and those with no identifiable name):

Ajay Agarwal, Amrit Raha, Arun Singh, Ashok Agarwal, Bhagyasree Venugopal, Chinmay Sawant, Deepak Gujar, Dr. Mohammed Umer Sharieff, Dunna Sekhar, Gokulakrishnan G, Gyana Sounder, Janardhan Uppada, Jayadev Menon, Kalpana Jayaraman, Karan Matalia, Krishnamoorthy Muthirulan, Lakshmikant Neve, Malay Adak, Mandar Bhagat, Padumma Gohain, Parthiv Sonu, Praveen Bennur, Praveen Chavan, Ram Vikas, Ramesh Shenai, Renjith V J, Sahana M, Sandeep Kumar Reddy Gangasani, Sarthy Prasanth, Sreekumar Chirukandoth, Steffin Babu, Surendhar Boobalan, Swarup Saha, Vaishnavi S, Vidhya Swaminathan, Vijaya Lakshmi, Vinodh Kambalathara, Vivek Rathod.

Many congratulations to all of them!

From these 38 names, one was drawn using a computer-generated random number. This person is Karan Matalia (eBird profile) who receives a T-shirt (Endemic Birds of India) as a small gift in appreciation.

Are you birding towards the February 2022 eBird challenge (to upload 40 eligible checklists – 20 lists from the four days of the GBBC (18-21 Feb) and another 20 in the remaining twenty-four days of the month? And of course, there are also the yearlong challenges for 2022!

A list of challenges at the global level can be seen here. The global eBirding challenge of the month will soon be posted here.

Header Image: Lesser Kestrel Falco naumanni ©Arijit Banerjee/ Macaulay Library