2022 Carpinteria CBC Instructions

by John Callender

Thank you for participating in the Carpinteria Christmas Bird Count (CBC). This year the Carpinteria CBC will take place on Saturday, December 17, 2022.

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 — Again 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.

Instructions for group leaders

Checklist — As group leader you are responsible for your group’s checklist(s) 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. See Bird Counting 101 from eBird for advice on making estimates of large bird numbers.

Get us your list of species 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. Here’s how to do that:

  • 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 for help.
  • Use the Carpinteria CBC Hotline. If you can’t get your eBird list in by noon, you can also just call the hotline number — (805) 364-2499 — and give us your list verbally. You’ll still need to get your full checklist to us eventually using one of the other methods described here, but the verbal report will be enough for the noon tally.
  • If you can’t use eBird, as a last resort you can submit paper-based checklists. To do that take a cellphone photo of your checklist and email it to [email protected] or text it to the Carpinteria CBC Hotline at (805) 364-2499. 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) in the format required by the National Audubon Society’s CBC organizers. The easiest way to do this is to fill out the online group leader effort form. The form is a little daunting, but most of it can be safely ignored.
  • You 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 [email protected] or text it to the Carpinteria CBC Hotline at (805) 364-2499.
  • Rarity documentation: Any bird that is marked with an asterisk on the count tally spreadsheet 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. As a last resort you can use the paper-based approach, then take a cellphone photo of your documentation and email it to [email protected] or text it to the Carpinteria CBC Hotline at (805) 364-2499.

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 by sharing your eBird checklist with the “CarpCBC” eBird user, just as you would do on the day of the count.

Updating the scouting/tally spreadsheet — As part of your scouting, and on count day itself, consider updating our shared real-time tally spreadsheet of birds seen by entering your information in the “Seen by” and “Location” columns for any birds you find that no one else has reported yet.

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 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.

Hotline — On count day between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. you can check in by phoning the Carpinteria CBC Hotline at (805) 364-2499. We’ll have someone staffing that number throughout the day, as well as monitoring and updating the tally spreadsheet as checklists come in. You can report rarities that you’ve seen, find out about rarities others have seen, or coordinate on chasing species we still need.

Real-time group chat — On the day of the count I’m proposing we use the #cbc-carpinteria channel in the Santa Barbara Birders Slack workspace to coordinate our efforts, especially in the afternoon when we’re trying to get missed species.

Zoom meetings

All of the following Zoom meetings are optional, but everyone is welcome to join. All CBC meetings will use the same Zoom link (see below).

Saturday, December 17 (count day) 12:30 p.m. 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.

Saturday, December 17 (count day) 6:30 p.m. compilation meeting — On count day we’ll have a Zoom meeting at 6:30 p.m. to celebrate, share stories, and see what the final (preliminary) species total is.

Links

Paper-based forms:

Previous Carpinteria CBCs:

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