Maine Bird Atlas - Weekly Challenges, 6/5

[Doug Hitchcox]

Hi everyone:

Last week's results:
Breeding season is ramping up and your effort to cover the state is paying off: you all managed to get confirmed breeding records in new blocks for 90 species! The extra effort for Bank Swallows did add one new block, but picked up three more for Northern Rough-winged Swallow as well. 91 checklists with confirmed Canada Geese bumped the number of confirmed blocks up by 26. And solid effort on Ovenbirds add 18 new blocks with possible, 24 with probable, and 5 with confirmed records. Congrats to Zach from Brooksville, Woody from Pembroke, and Whit in Phippsburg for being chosen by excel’s random number generator as winners this week!

Here are the challenges for this week:

1) All Species Safe Day - That is right, every atlaser’s favorite made-up holiday is next Wednesday, June 10th. On that day we will be in the safe dates for all species and you can start ignoring safe dates (at least until July). The challenge is to submit a list on the 10th, 11th, or 12th (before noon, when I draw winners) that has at least 15 coded species on it.

2) Red-eyed Vireo - They’re singing everywhere right now and a pair in my backyard are reconstructing last year’s nest, which was all the motivation I needed to pick this species for the challenge. Any coded records in NEW blocks is your challenge: https://ebird.org/atlasme/map/reevir1

3) Nightjars - The bright moon this weekend should make for good opportunities to hear Common Nighthawks and Eastern Whip-poor-wills. Any coded records for these species puts you in the running for this challenge (nighthawk safe dates begins today).

Good birding and happy atlasing!


Doug Hitchcox
Maine Bird Atlas - Outreach Coordinator
Maine Audubon - Staff Naturalist
207-781-2330 x237
dhit...@maineaudubon.org