Caribbean Bird Records – Unusual Sightings – Needed for North American Birds

This female Common Eider was spotted at Cooper’s Island, Bermuda during the 2016 annual Christmas Bird Count, and was the first record for the island. (Photo by Andrew Dobson)

For over 100 years, North American Birds and its predecessors have delivered regionalized summaries of bird populations — including the West Indies. These regional reports are now being housed online which means they can be available much more quickly than the traditional printed copies. If you are already an eBirder*, you should be able to find your unusual records very easily.

For about three years, publication of reports unfortunately ceased altogether due to staffing and management issues at the journal. But with a new team on board, things are happening fast!

BirdsCaribbean members Robert Norton, Anthony Levesque, and Andrew Dobson have been compiling seasonal reports for the West Indies and Bermuda region for many years. We are keen to maintain these reports but can only do this with your help.

What records are required? — rare sightings, unusually high numbers, the effect of hurricanes on local bird populations, etc. We are especially keen to receive news of the ‘first record’ of a species or the ‘first breeding record’. There is the opportunity of show-casing more photos online than in the printed copy, and so if you have a great photo of a rarely seen bird please submit that, too.

We need your unusual records from 2018 onwards. Simply email us a list indicating:

A Spotted Crake was reported from Desirade Island, Guadeloupe in 2014. This species was only the second record for the Caribbean. (Photo by Anthony Levesque)

Name of observer
Name of species
Number of birds
Location
Date first seen
Date last seen (if known)
A hyperlink to your eBird Caribbean checklist
Any other comments (e.g. first record since 1995, first known wintering record, earliest spring arrival)

All contributors will be listed and credited with sightings.

Many thanks if you are able to help. To speed up the process, please feel free to copy all three regional co-editors listed below when you send the email.

Thank you,

Andrew Dobson (Past-President, BirdsCaribbean)

Andrew Dobson (Bermuda)

andrewdobs@gmail.com

Robert L. Norton (Greater Antilles, Bahamas)

corvus0486@aol.com

Anthony Levesque (Lesser Antilles)

anthony.levesque@wanadoo.fr

*For those of you that are new to eBird, it’s a fun and easy (and very powerful!) platform to record your bird sightings, find the best places to bird, and more. And your data helps scientists better understand and conserve birds. If you’re in the Caribbean, be sure to use our portal, eBird Caribbean, to enter your data which offers birding protocols (e.g., the Caribbean Waterbird Census) and news stories unique to the region. We encourage you to get started and create an account; follow the quick instructions here. The eBird mobile app, available for both IOS and Android, is also great for entering your data straight from the field. Be sure to choose “Caribbean” as your region in the eBird app settings (“Settings” –> “Portal”).