March's Challenge Winner

As we steer towards the end of the Autumn season, and with Winter beginning to settle in across the country, we’re happy to finally be able to announce the winner of our March Atlas Challenge!

March marked the first month of the Atlas Autumn season, and with that we wanted to encourage the Atlas community to be trying to gather observations across as many grid squares as possible to increase coverage. The previous Autumn seasons have been affected by national lockdowns to help with COVID-19, and therefore the spatial coverage has been, understandably, lower. With the current situation allowing far more freedom in our movements, a key goal of this Autumn was going into as many grid squares as possible to increase the seasonal coverage.

As always, we saw an absolutely fantastic effort from everyone in the Atlas community. To qualify, all you had to do was submit complete checklists to 5 unique grid squares in the Atlas eBird portal during the month of March. Every 5 unique grid squares you entered data into gave you one entry into the draw. These checklists had to include counts for every species reported (no X’s!), be submitted to the Atlas portal and were to follow the best practices outlined here to increase the scientific value of the data.

Over 7,500 checklists were submitted to the NZ Bird Atlas eBird portal during March, and 107 Atlasers qualified for the challenge by submitting data to 5 or more unique Atlas grid squares. Over 840 grid squares received complete checklists during this period, over a quarter of all of the country’s grid squares! We continue to be encouraged by how many people are submitting regularly, and also venturing into more squares to increase data coverage – thank you and well done! As always, there could only be one winner for the challenge though, so from those 107 we randomly selected Donavin de Jager as the winner!

Donavin submitted a total of 155 complete checklists to the Atlas eBird portal during March, detailing a total of 63 species, across 27 grid squares. Donavin has contributed valuable diurnal and nocturnal data across a wide spatial area, helping further increase the Atlas dataset. These checklists were complete, with accurate abundances for all species, greatly increasing the scientific value of Donavin’s observations. This is part of Donavin’s wider Atlasing effort since the project began in 2019 with a huge amount of time and effort having gone in. With that in mind please join us in congratulating Donavin on being randomly selected as our winner! Donavin can now enjoy a free years subscription to Birds of the World.

Congratulations to all those who qualified, Donavin wasn’t the only one who put in an incredible amount of individual effort with Atlasers going into the tens of grid squares to submit valuable contributions. We have not set a challenge this May, as we prepare for the upcoming BirdsNZ conference in Christchurch. There we will be presenting on the Atlas, running a stall to answer questions, as well as running a workshop on eBird and the Atlas. We are also preparing for our first Toi Toi Wines funded expedition to the West Coast! Stay tuned for more information, and we hope to see some of you at the conference.

Koekoeā/long-tailed cuckoo (Eudynamys taitensis) | © Donavin de Jager

As usual, we asked Donavin some questions below as our next Atlaser Profile.

Can you tell us a bit about your background, how long you have been birding and what first got you interested in birds?

I lived in South Africa for most of my life and only moved to New Zealand in December of 2019. In South Africa I worked as a nature guide in Kruger National Park. This is when I started taking birding much more seriously (November of 2016). My love for birds started by helping my grandmother raise Rose-ringed Parakeet chicks. I found them absolutely fascinating and wanted to know more. Once I started working in Kruger National Park, I noticed the incredible diversity of birds and I was hooked for life.

How long have you been using eBird?

I am still quite new to eBird, but I absolutely love it and will continue to support it as much as I can. I started using eBird around the end of 2019.

How are you liking the current Atlas project so far?

I am absolutely loving the Atlas project. Being able to go into squares where little to no species have been seen, is quite rewarding. It truly gives one the sense that you are adding to the data collection. I think this is mostly because of every new species you see in these rare squares showing up as “Rare” or “Unreported”. It also helps me to bird in areas that I didn’t even knew existed. It is quite addictive to be the first to report a species in a square. Because of this addiction, you end up spending more time outdoors and improving your knowledge immensely.

How did you enjoy the March Atlas challenge?

I enjoyed the challenge quite a bit and really look forward to future challenges like it. I am challenging myself to go birding every single day this year and to try and reach 350 squares by the end of the year. So challenges like these really inspire me to push my limits and try to contribute more and more each day.

How valuable do you feel the Atlas is going to be for bird conservation and research in Aotearoa New Zealand?

Indescribably important! I am currently doing an Ecology minor at Massey University and seeing the current conservation efforts is quite inspiring. However, it also makes me realise how much more needs to be done for New Zealand’s native wildlife. This project can help ecologists determine where the introduced species are, how they move around and where the native species are trying to survive. The difficult to get to squares normally hold valuable information, but without projects like this one, the information will remain hidden. I truly hope that more people start taking part in the Atlas project and that more of the difficult squares will be reached.

Do you have any standout Atlasing moments so far?

Being part of Birds New Zealand’s atlas team is a standout moment for me. Meeting people that are just as passionate as me (and sometimes even more) about birding, is truly inspiring. Working with the atlas leaders helps me to stay motivated about a positive future for the bird life in Aotearoa. Their passion and determination are addictive and I truly love learning more about eBird through people like this.

Have you got any tips/advice for new Atlasers who are thinking of getting involved with the Atlas and eBird or the birding community in general?

Don’t be afraid of not knowing any bird calls or even struggling with visual bird identifications. Get involved with a passionate team and they will teach you everything they know. Birds are absolutely incredible and we need your help to collect more data and save some of the endangered and/or threatened species. eBird can seem quite difficult to use at first, but by having a friend show you the ropes, you will get used to it in no time. As far as bird calls go, try spending more time outside. By doing this you will encounter species that you can ID visually and some of them will do calls and songs. This way you can connect the sound with the species without any issues. Lastly, be patient. Birding takes a while to get used to, as individuals you look at might fly away and/or not call. Take your time watching their behaviour, flight patterns and habits. This will help you grow your birding knowledge immensely.

I love teaching others and as a guide, seeing people’s eyes light up when they see a new bird species and/or see a new behaviour was the best part of the job. There is no feeling like finding a lifer, or seeing a rare behaviour/habit. I don’t care who you are, if you spend some time with someone as passionate as me (or with someone more passionate than me), you will (at the very least) admire and respect bird life more than you ever thought possible.

Weka (Gallirallus australis) | © Donavin de Jager

Donavin has some beautiful imagery that we highly recommend you check out on his website.

Many thanks again to the Birds of the World team for kindly donating this prize for a lucky Atlaser to win, it is hugely appreciated.

Birds of the World is a powerful resource that brings deep, scholarly content from four celebrated works of ornithology into a single platform where biologists and birders can find comprehensive life history information on birds. Every bird has a story. Discover them all with Birds of the World. This free one year subscription will unlock species accounts, maps, multimedia, and bird family overviews for you to explore and enjoy.

Keep your eyes peeled on our News page, Facebook or Instagram, to keep up to date with the project.

Happy Atlasing!