2021 Carpinteria CBC Instructions

by John Callender

Important note: The 2021 Carpinteria CBC is over. For current information on the Carpinteria CBC, see the count web page here: The Carpinteria Christmas Bird Count

Thank you for participating in the Carpinteria Christmas Bird Count (CBC). This year the Carpinteria CBC will take place on Saturday, December 18, 2021. If you haven’t signed up for the count yet and would like to participate, you can do so by filling out the following form:

2021 Carpinteria CBC Sign-up Form

Instructions for everyone

Know your assignment — You should have been assigned an area to cover by the count’s organizers. If you’re unclear on where you’ll be birding on count day, or you have any other questions, contact John Callender at [email protected] or by phone or text at 805-455-0053.

Coordinate with your group — If you’ll be birding with other people you should have received contact information for the other people in your group when you got your assignment. Coordinate with your group leader on logistics: where and when to meet, etc.

Follow COVID-19 guidelines — We want to have a safe count. For this year we will not be having any large in-person meetings. If you are part of a group that includes people from different households, please follow all state and county public-health guidelines regarding social distancing and mask use. Group members are encouraged to share their vaccination status with other group members, and to avoid carpooling, sharing optics, or indoor gatherings.

Instructions for group leaders

Checklist — As group leader you are responsible for your group’s checklist of species identified and the counts for each species. Someone else can record the list, but as group leader you are responsible for its accuracy. It’s fine if not every bird can be identified or some counts need to be estimated. Just do your best. See Bird Counting 101 from eBird for advice on making good estimates of bird numbers.

Submit your checklist by noon on count day — It will be very helpful for those of us who want to keep birding if you can get your list in by noon. There are a few ways to submit your list:

  • Use eBird. This is the preferred approach. You can share your list with the “CarpCBC” eBird user, either at the time you submit the list or afterwards at the eBird website. See Sharing Checklists at eBird.
  • You can also use your eBird account to join the Carpinteria CBC trip report ahead of time. All group leaders should receive an invitation to join that trip report in eBird. Once you have done so, your lists on count day will automatically appear in the trip report when they are submitted, without your having to share with the “CarpCBC” eBird user.
  • Finally, if you use paper-based checklists you can take a cellphone photo of your checklist and email it to John Callender at [email protected] or text it to him at 805-455-0053. See the bottom of this page for links to paper-based forms.

Other documentation — Once you’ve submitted your checklist the other documentation isn’t as time-sensitive. The deadline for submission of the following items is one week after count day.

  • Participant and effort form: All group leaders and solo birders need to report their effort (party count, time, and distance). The easiest way to do this is to fill out the online group leader effort form.
  • You also can use the paper-based approach. See the bottom of this page for a link to the paper-based effort form, which you can download and fill out. Then take a cellphone photo and email it to John Callender at [email protected] or text it to him at 805-455-0053.
  • Rarity documentation: Any bird that is particularly rare (Category 4 and 5 birds on the count spreadsheet), or that is easily confused with a more-common species, will require additional documentation. The best way to submit that documentation is to put it in your eBird list; see How to document your sightings from eBird for how to do that. You also can use the paper-based approach, then take a cellphone photo of your documentation and email it to John Callender at [email protected] or text it to him at 805-455-0053. See the bottom of this page for links to the paper-based forms.

Instructions for Gung-ho Types

The above instructions cover everything you need to do. But if you want to do more, you can! 🙂

Scouting — You can help by scouting the count circle before the big day. Submit your scouting information via eBird, similarly to how you would on the day of the count. Either share your checklists with the “CarpCBC” eBird user in eBird, or join the Carpinteria CBC Scouting trip report.

Updating the tally spreadsheet — As part of your scouting, and on count day itself, consider updating our shared real-time tally spreadsheet of birds seen. Enter your name in the “Seen by” column for any birds you find that haven’t been reported.

Note: You might need an app like the Google Sheets app on your phone in order to enter updates in the field. You can practice by updating the spreadsheet prior to count day with your scouting results. The night before the count we’ll empty out the “Seen by” column so we’re ready for the count, but we’ll keep the Locations column so we know where birds were seen during scouting.

12:30 Zoom tally — On count day we’ll have a Zoom meeting at 12:30 p.m. to go over what we’ve found, what’s still missing, and plan afternoon birding for anyone who wants to keep going. The Zoom link is below.

6:30 Zoom tally — On count day we’ll have a Zoom meeting at 6:30 p.m. to share stories and see what the final (preliminary) species total is. We’ll use the same Zoom link as for the 12:30 p.m. tally; see below for the link.

Zoom details for both the 12:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. tally meetings:

Zoom meeting for noon tally and 6:30 p.m. recap:

Topic: Carpinteria CBC tally
Time: Dec 18, 2021 12:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85969796899?pwd=YmV4VkxZSHJ5N1dnS3pIcVZ6elpHQT09

Meeting ID: 859 6979 6899
Passcode: 071496

Links

Paper-based forms:

Previous Carpinteria CBCs: