This weekend the COA held its annual meeting in Middlesex Community College, and it was great to see so much enthusiasm for the atlas project (to view slides from the talk I gave, click here). A number of questions came up during the meeting and I will try to address the ones I heard repeatedly on the blog over the next week or two. But, first, I wanted to pass on a few statistics about where the project stands.
To date, we have at least 610 volunteers on the atlas email list, 246 of whom have adopted a block. We have assigned 357 blocks – 30 since Saturday; 5 more blocks and we’ll have 60% assigned. 161 eBird checklists have been shared with the ctbirdatlas account, with confirmed records for 9 species. Two of those species (bald eagle and common raven) already have more confirmations than during the first Connecticut bird atlas. Other species with nests already include: mute swan, great blue heron, osprey, red-tailed hawk, red-shouldered hawk, great horned owl, and American crow. We also have almost 30 reports of probable breeding by American woodcock.
Clearly, it is still early days, but things are moving fast, which bodes well for the next three years of field work.
If you are still trying to decide whether to sign up for a block, the map below shows where we still need help. And, of course, don’t forget that you don’t need to sign up for a block to contribute data.
