Thursday, March 27, 2008

Help Out Rusty Blackbirds!

From the eBird team:

With the help of Steve Matsuoka and the Rusty Blackbird Working Group we've initiated a pilot study of Rusty Blackbird migration through eBird. In this 'proof of concept' study, we hope birders will get out and look specifically for Rusty Blackbirds, and then report their observations to eBird between 1-7 April. You can read more about it here. If all goes well we can better tailor the survey for fall migration, and possibly do some target outreach during winter as well. Any help that you can provide getting the word out about this grassroots effort would be great. Local promotion on the listserves [and blogs] would be a huge help. There is little known about this species during migration, and we feel strongly that eBirders can help fill in some of the gaps in that knowledge. Please forward this information on to others who might be interested in this study.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This should be interesting to learn about. After years of finding very few Rusty Blackbirds in Spring and even fewer in Fall, last year Corey over at 10,000 Birds and myself had never seen so many before. They were everywhere from early April until mid May. Corey even spotted a few copulating well south of the known breeding range (non bred however), but dozens and dozens and dozens of the birds could be found in every swamp. Maybe the tide has turned? We shall see!