Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Three decades of retroactive e-bird

A few months ago, I pulled some of my older field note books out of their storage chest, and found them damp and mildewed. This kinda freaked me out, ya know? They're my main record of 32 years of birds, with no consistent or organized backup. So, I have undertaken the quasi-herculean task of entering my entire life's birding into e-bird, to give me an independent, off-site backup. Thus far I've got about 20 years completed. It's actually a fascinating task, going through all my old notes one bird at a time and reliving every day and every bird of it. Plus I get to generate graphs and such from my sightings. Perhaps most fundamental, it puts all my individual records in a growing collective database, where they help the blurry pictures of American avifauna slowly come into sharper focus over time and space.

1 Comments:

At 1:48 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello;

I am wondering if you are the William M. Pulliam who conducted a breeding bird census of the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve in 1982. If so, I wonder if you still have the species maps you created as part of that project. I have a copy of the final report, and it refers to such maps. We have a group that is organizing the historical information on Jasper Ridge bird diversity, and these maps would be of potential value, in addition to your report, which we already have.

Thank you!

 

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