Bird Count India update, August 2014

[BirdCount India]

Dear friends,

We thought we would provide a small update on how things are going with the Bird Count India consortium in terms of promoting listing and monitoring of birds in the country.

1. Growth in eBird

As you know, we encourage birders and birding groups to use eBird as a platform to upload their observations. The information is publicly available, and is published to the data portal at the Global Biodiversity Information facility (GBIF). Recently, thanks to the annual eBird update, the number of observations on the GBIF portal crossed half a billion. At this point, eBird records contribute roughly 30% of all observations in GBIF.

In India, activity on eBird has been roughly steady over the past few months, with between 20,000 and 30,000 records contributed each month. The total number of records from India now stands at 488,000, and hopefully winter birding will bring in many more observations.

2. Birding coverage

The coverage, in terms of lists and records, in India is quite uneven. States with 30,000 or more records are: Karnataka (101k), Kerala (73k), Tamil Nadu (56k), Uttarakhand (36k), Goa (36k), Rajasthan (35k), and Maharashtra (30k). A large number of States have very few records, including most of the northeastern States, and also some large States with a large number of birders; like undivided Andhra Pradesh (7k), West Bengal (10k), and Gujarat (12k).

You can explore overall coverage across States here:
http://ebird.org/ebird/country/IN/regions

These numbers also conceal that fact that the distribution of records from within each State is also highly clustered (eg, in southern Karnataka). In some parts of the country, the vast majority of records come from the winter only, contributed by foreign birding tourists. This leaves a major gap in information during the summer/monsoon. The situation is better in some States, where birders have been uploading their lists through the summer and monsoon - notably Kerala, but also Goa and parts of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

3. Species

Just for fun, here are the most-reported species from India. Common Myna (1.8% of all records), House Crow (1.7%), Red-vented Bulbul (1.6%), White-throated Kingfisher (1.5%), Jungle Crow (1.4%), Indian Pond-Heron (1.4%), Rose-ringed Parakeet (1.4%), Black Kite (1.4%).

One can explore maps of these species, for specified years or months. For example, here is the map of Pied Cuckoo for December to April, and here for May to November.

4. Events

Several birding groups have been using the eBird platform as a convenient means to run birding surveys or counts in their regions. Examples include the Kerala Common Bird Monitoring Programme, the Bangalore Bird Count, the Big Bird Day (all in Feb 2014), the Pondicherry Bird Count (July 2014), the Mysore City Bird Atlas (Feb and June 2014), and the Goa Monsoon Sunday Bird Challenges, Kerala Heronry Count and Kerala Pelagic Surveys (all ongoing).

Events coming up in the near future include the Onam Bird Count (Kerala, Sept 2014), the Doon Valley Bird Atlas (Oct 2014 to Jan 2015), the Uttarakhand Birding Festival (early Feb 2015), and the Great Backyard Bird Count (India and worldwide, 13-16 Feb 2015).

If your group, or another group you know, is planning to organize a birding event, and would like to take advantage of the eBird platform, please drop us a line so that we can maintain a comprehensive list of such events. We would also like to publicize the events on www.birdcount.in. If you require any technical assistance (eg using the platform, downloading and using the data generated), we would be happy to help.

In addition to these events, the regular Bird Count India monthly ebirding challenges continue. The most recent eBirders of the Month are here.

Please do write if you have any questions, comments or ideas on how we can collectively promote listing and monitoring of birds across the country.

Happy Birding!

The Bird Count India consortium

Web: www.birdcount.in
Facebook: www.facebook.com/birdcount.india
Twitter: @birdcountindia
Google group: groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/birdcountindia