Posted by Bob Lefebvre

After a year-long effort, the participants in eBird Calgary 2015 have entered their final checklists, and below we have the preliminary final results. I was quite impressed by how many Calgary-area birders made an effort to keep getting out all year long to find new birds. Twenty-six people reported over 200 species within the 80-km count circle during the year! Many of them had their highest total ever for the region.

Most impressive was the 275 species found by the overall winner, Brian Elder. As far as we have been able to determine, this is a new high total for the Calgary count circle, and ten species higher than the winning total in the 2005 competition. It looks like 301 species were reported in all within the circle in 2015. In 2014, there were eight fewer species reported in the circle, and the top individual total was Dan Arndt at 233.

Quite a few of the participants were new to using eBird. Most of them really took to it, finding it to be a valuable birding tool, which helps them to be more aware of the patterns of bird movements through the area, and enables them to quickly find out about sightings of unusual or target species. I sincerely hope that those who began using eBird in 2015 will continue to use it just as much in the future.

The Calgary county led all Alberta counties in species reported on eBird, as it usually does, but where we really stood out in 2015 was the number of checklists submitted:

This kind of coverage on eBird really helps to make the data more valuable, so I hope we don’t see a drop in submissions in 2016.

The results below are not official. We will have the final results later this month. The prizes will be presented at the Birds & Beers meeting on Friday January 29th. This will be held at the Horton Road Legion, Centennial Calgary Branch #285, 9202 Horton Road SW. Everyone is welcome to come out and have a meal and a drink, after which we will present the prizes. In addition to prizes for the winners in the categories below, we will also have prizes for Big Day, Bird of the Year, and the Latecomer Challenge. Join us on January 29 for the final results.

Leaders, 80-km circle:

Here are the top competitors listed with their species totals and categories (the “Not Eligible” competitors are on the organizing committee). Also included is the number of complete checklists they have submitted to eBird within the 80-km circle. This total does not include “incidental” sightings.

Using the arrows you can sort the columns to see all the participants in one category listed together, or sort by number of species, or number of checklists. You can also increase or decrease the number of lines shown.

80-km Circle Leaders, December 31, 2015

Yard Challenge Update

Here are the leaders, showing the number of species identified in or from the competitor’s yards.

Yard Challenge Leaders, December 31

After the prize presentation I will have one more report on the official winners. We will also be doing a presentation at the April meeting of Nature Calgary’s Bird Studies Group.

Congratulations to everyone who took part! I hope you had fun, met some of your fellow birders, and learned more about the birds!