eBirding

I’ve been using the summer to put some of my old records into eBird. Partly because I’ve no idea how many birds I’ve actually seen, and am curious to know, and partly because I just think the whole concept of eBird and citizen science is awesome.

What I’ve realized though, is I kept really shitty notes on most of my trips, and none at all on others. I know when I came back from Morocco I had a list of over 100 birds including some pretty interesting Atlas mountain species. 10 years later I have a couple of scribbles in my fieldguide and no real idea what I saw,  apart from a vague memory of Moussier's Redstart because it had such a cool name.

Other trips my field guides seem to have scribbled dates, but no locations. In hindsight, I guess it's much more important to know where you saw something than when you saw it! I did manage to find a really old passport and use the stamps to at least work out what year I’d been to certain places.

Anyway, I’m just over 1700 birds into inputting data, and still going. I’ve yet to finish my Argentina list, which will be the hardest as I lived there, guided and birded for a few years.

I don't know why I thought I couldn't write stuff down while I was guiding...

This marginalia is about as good as my notes get: