eBird use is increasing in North Central Washington. That’s a good thing. There’s a certain satisfaction in watching your checklist count grow over time or knowing that your observations are used in the background science that researchers employ.

But what about our local use? Can we use eBird to answer questions that we may have? For instance, “what is the pattern of Anna’s Hummingbirds observations over time”? Or “how do Anna’s Hummingbird eBird entries in Chelan county stack up against a big, westside county like King county”?

The short (51 second) video shows the timeline for Anna’s Hummingbirds over time. The data values used have been normalized to make the data from the highly populated King county comparable to the smaller population Chelan county.

How does this match up with your expectations? Is it surprising to see that King county has a much greater population of Anna’s than Chelan county? Did it surprise you to see the first eBird Anna’s entry in Chelan county show up in 2008?

I believe that the North Central Washington Audubon Society chapter becomes better informed and more interested and connected to our birds if we see our data used. That’s a long way to say “more to come”.

Stay tuned and let us know what you think about this type of presentation. Thanks.