Leave it to me to stir the pot on this atlas. I've had some doubts since I started hearing things about the format this time around. I haven't delved into it too much so far - since it has been winter. So I had to do a double take when I got the atlas newsletter at the end of February saying that 12 species had already been confirmed as breeders.
Fast forward to today, as I saw two species sitting on nests. So I figured it was time for me to figure out how to use the atlas portal on e-bird. I knew going in I was going to see long lists that included wintering birds and migrants - where I'd like to see breeding information. But it's a bit more than that. It seems ripe for errors of various kinds. Just to cite one example under the heading of "what's going on here?", I see that Bufflehead - a species not recorded on the previous atlases - is "probable" in seven blocks. And it's only March 12. The times they are a changin'. Steve Walter -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01 Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
