We hope that you are all uploading your August lists to eBird towards the August challenge — there is time until 5th Sept to do so. In the meantime, here is the challenge for September: upload as many lists as you possibly can!
Until now, we have had certain fixed targets for each monthly challenge. For example, the August challenge was to upload 20 complete lists and the July challenge was to upload lists totalling at least ten hours of birding. But this month, the sky is the limit — the more lists you can upload the better.
As earlier, each list should be an effort-based, complete list
of at least 15 min duration. There is no target, the more such lists you can upload the better.
Instead of listing only those names who have met a monthly target, we will display names of all those who have uploaded at least five effort-based, complete lists of at least 15 min duration. But we will do it as a wordcloud (see wikipedia), so that those birders with the highest number of lists will stand out!
What about the monthly gift, you ask? Well, instead of putting all names in a pool and choosing one name at random, we will be putting all eligible lists (effort-based, complete, 15min or longer) in a pool, and will choose one list at random to find the recipient for September. This means that the more lists you have contributed to the pool, the more likely you will be to get an interesting book about birds. (We hope this is clear — if not, please do ask in the comments section below.)
Between March and August, the average number of effort-based, complete lists of 15 min or longer submitted to eBird from India has been just over 1,000 per month. Here’s looking forward to a large increase in this number as the winter migration seasons hots up!
Please upload all your September lists by 5 October so that we can announce the results on 6 October.
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: Indian White-eye (Oriental White-eye) Zosterops palpebrosus by Ashwini Bhatt/ Macaulay Library
Really liked the strategy to choose the winner – the game begins. Best challenge for the month when we have Onam Bird Count where number of lists matter.