The final countdown continues before the Atlas finishes, and we have another challenge this month for you all 🤓
📆February is the final month of the final Summer season and the Atlas team want to continue to encourage the Atlas community to be trying to gather observations across as many grid squares as possible before the season ends. This season has seen some impressive Atlasing by the community to get more data into more Atlas grid squares, that never had Summer data before. Below shows the current stats as of today, with reference to the increases since the Summer season began in December 2023. Well done to all of you, particularly for helping spread out your effort into those under-surveyed grid squares!
Current Summer Season statistics, showing the impressive increases from the Atlas community’s efforts
⏹️With that in mind, the February Atlas challenge is grid-square related, and we have a free pass to give away for one of the Bird Academy courses listed below!
🏆During February one lucky Atlaser will win a free access pass to select one of the following Bird Academy online courses:
1. How to Photograph Birds with Melissa Groo
2. The wonderful world of Owls
3. Understanding Bird Behaviour
To qualify, all you have to do is submit complete checklists to 5 grid squares in the Atlas eBird portal during the month of February. Every 5 unique grid squares you enter data into gives you one entry into the draw, so if you submit data to 10 unique grid squares your name goes in twice, 15 unique grid squares gets you 3 entries etc. Remember your checklists must include counts for every species reported (no X’s!) and should follow the best practices outlined here.
The easiest way is to check out the Atlas Effort Map and we really encourage still targeting low effort Summer grid squares. There are still plenty to explore and help gather bird observations in.
The Atlas Effort Map showing low effort grid squares for Summer in the top of the South Island. A great place to go and visit this February if you can!
The winner will be randomly drawn from everyone who qualifies and announced at the beginning of April.
Many thanks again to the legends at Bird Academy for kindly donating this prize for a lucky Atlaser to win. It is hugely appreciated!
🗺️For this challenge we continue to recommend using the many tools at your disposal in the Explore tab. The Atlas Effort Map is the best place to find where your efforts are best placed, particularly targeting those Summer grid squares that have less than 3 hours diurnal effort in. Our final lockdown webinar can help you review how to plan surveying a square too.
We hope you enjoy targeting as many low effort grid squares as possible this month to finish the Summer season strongly. Stay safe and have fun out there!
Let us know how you are getting on with the Atlas challenge, and feel free to share your Atlasing adventures on social media, or send us an email. We’re always keen to hear how you’re getting on and help however we can.