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My eBird Citizen Science Experiment

10,000 Birds

Two years ago, I was counting active nests of Rooks in the flat agricultural landscape north of Belgrade, Serbia. We drove for about 290 km through the 400 square kilometres expanse of Pancevacki Rit and found 8 breeding colonies with 252 occupied nests, or a density of 1.6 And that is where I started to experiment with the eBird.

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The top-5 birds of 2018

10,000 Birds

I counted them very roughly, but I do have a lot of experience estimating flocks. The next specialty is the Red-footed Falcon in the Deliblato Sands Nature Reserve in the east of Serbia: “Two European Rollers await us on the wires, while one Eurasian Hoopoe flies by. Then 20 more joined them, so I entered 100 in my notebook.

2018 118
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Birding from a Hide

10,000 Birds

I have asked myself that same question many times over the last six months, until last week, when I was involved in an opening ceremony of five new bird hides at the Palic Lake, by the town of Subotica in the very north of Serbia, along the border with Hungary (all photos are from that area). They got the message right. And so did I.

Serbia 250
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How I dipped the Horned Grebe

10,000 Birds

In the Old World, Horned (Slavonian) Grebe breeds in a wide belt stretching from Scandinavia to Kamchatka and it spends winters along sea coasts, from Japan to China and from Norway to France, plus the Adriatic and the Black Sea (west and east of the Balkans, respectively). As a consequence, this species is only a rare vagrant in Serbia.

Serbia 172
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15 expat-friendly countries for a birder to move to

10,000 Birds

This map shows the distribution of the World’s bird species, based on overlying the breeding and wintering ranges of all known species. I used to live in Botswana, where there are about 450 bird species in an area a few dozen miles from the capital; then somewhat naively moved back to Serbia with mere 250 species around the capital.

Sri Lanka 257
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Cry “Havoc!” or a Birding Movie before the Birding Movie

10,000 Birds

Technically, it was a possibility, but if that was the case, he would never defend a PhD thesis on birds breeding along the high voltage powerlines in a treeless agricultural landscape. What made the story better (and a worse experience for him) was the fact that the cops had seen the Dogs of War. In real life!

Belize 239
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How I Become a Birder

10,000 Birds

And I had a friend working in the museum, who put me in touch with their birds curator (with whom I recently birded the Griffon Vulture gorges of western Serbia) and who answered all my questions at the time. I still believe that choosing the right approach may be the most important phase of any research. What more would I ask from eBird?

Serbia 189