e-Bird

Birdwatching has been transformed by its own social media.  e-Bird, run by Cornell University collects tens of thousands of reports submitted by dedicated birdwatchers.  They geocode them, identifying 'hotspots' by repeated submissions.  Three are in the park:


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Hotspot	Species	Rank in Halifax County
Salt Marsh Trail	158	13
Bissett Lake	101	36
Shearwater Flyer	89	47

another is nearby

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Rainbow Haven

168

9

For today, let's check out the SMT.

You can look at a chart of the occurrence of species in checklists.  This doesn't account for relative abundance, just prevalence.  The top ten species (with a month-by-month chart, highest occurrence red, lowest green) are:

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American Crow
Herring Gull
Black-capped Chickadee
American Black Duck
Ring-billed Gull
Song Sparrow
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Black-backed Gull
Canada Goose
Greater Yellowlegs

So you'll always see a crow or a herring gull.

You can explore data and print your own checklists.

Here is a treemap of all species seen on the SMT since 2005.  The size of a box is proportional to the frequency of appearance in checklists.  The bigger the box, the greater the prevalence.