2,000 Consecutive eBird Checklist Days

     On Wednesday I submitted another checklist to the eBird database for Island Beach State Park.  This checklist marked the 2,000th consecutive day for which I submitted a checklist.  The first checklist in this streak started back nearly five and one-half years ago on July 28, 2018.  When I reached this milestone, it was no different than any other day that I entered a checklist.  There were no popping balloons and confetti on my screen, like a birthday text message on an iPhone.  There was no congratulatory message from the administrators at eBird or Cornell Lab.  Actually, no one would even know how many consecutive days anyone else has since this statistic only appears on each person’s personal eBird account screen.  If I recall correctly, my friend Larry experienced the same when he reached 10,000 checklists.

Screen shot of my eBird home page.  The stats, other than the Days of Checklist Streak, are for New Jersey checklists only.

Of course, people like Larry and I do not bird and use eBird looking for milestone applause.  We do it because we like to bird and, for me at least, eBird is easier than toting around a notepad and pen. Checklists for eBird mean different things to many of the birders I know.  Some use them regularly with strict adherence to all associated protocols and some could care less at all about submitting a list.  I am one of those somewhere in between the extremes.  I use eBird as my personal birding filing cabinet.  It keeps all my bird sightings in a neatly stored and retrievable database.  It even gives me iCloud storage of bird photos.  Also, my efforts may be of help to scientists and the birding community.  

I can look back at the past 2,000 days of birding and share some interesting statistics because I submitted checklists.  Since late July 2018, I have added 246 new life birds.  The first one was a Florida Scrub-jay on August 27, 2018.  The most recent was the Red-flanked Bluetail this past December.  That same old-world flycatcher was my 82nd new bird for New Jersey during this time.  Over the course of the streak, I added nearly 8,000 photos and roughly 80 audio clips to the Macaulay Library.  Since July 28, 2018, I have submitted over 4,100 checklists.  I birded in 12 different states, four countries, two oceans and the Gulf of Mexico.  

I don’t know how long I will keep this personal streak going, but I will keep submitting data as long as I can find a bird.

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