Thomas Bay Marsh in Brunswick, Maine, USA. Photo by Kathie Brown. All rights reserved by the photographer.
In the process of accepting shared checklists, I realised that many of you are making counts on multiple days from the same location. At the time of writing, there are 268 approved checklists and 224 unique counting locations which means that 44 checklists have been submitted from the same location at least twice.
Dunlin by Dean Eades. All rights reserved by the photographer.
So here is a challenge ONE is for the last 3 days of the Global Shorebird Counts. If possible, survey new locations around you regardless of its importance or significance. Another rice field, another salt pans or another section of the tidal zone, and I could list many other habitat types what are all important to cover.
Challenge TWO is to revisit those locations where you counted shorebirds in the previous years but has not yet been covered yet this year. Doing counts at the same location, on the same route, with same effort helps to improve the comparability of data.
Are you up for the challenge?