100 Posts, 1000 Checklists

Yesterday I reached a milestone for 2017...I submitted my 1000th eBird checklist for the year. About 600 of them were complete checklists, and the other portion were "incidental" checklists. For those who don't know the difference, a complete checklist is when your main purpose is to go out birding and you report all the species you could identify. An "incidental" checklist is when you just note a bird while going about your daily routine (or driving 1600 km from London to Thunder Bay).

While there are people out there who have submitted well over 8000 checklists this year alone, I am proud of my accomplishment given the circumstances I am in. For one, I am a student who must legally be in school, so that right there cuts down the amount of birding time I get. Second, I can't drive, so there goes trips on which I could submit lots of checklists. Lastly, I only got a phone this past August, so submitting checklists was a whole lot harder before eBird mobile!

So, what made me submit double the number of checklists that I have submitted since I started eBirding? Well, early this year, eBird came out with the "Checklist-a-Day" challenge. Basically, the challenge was to submit at least one checklist for each day in the year, for a total of 365 checklists. Well, eBird didn't exactly make it clear that you just need 365 by the end of the year, so I made a point to submit one EACH day, which from what I hear, a lot of people did. After awhile, it was just habit, so I easily surpassed 365 checklists early on, and I didn't stop there! A fun little challenge morphed into a full blown addiction. This year, eBird is doing another "Checklist-a-Day" challenge, so I guess I won't be able to rest!

Now, for the 1000th checklist of the year.....

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S41245311

Okay, so maybe not the most exciting list species wise, but what can you do? It is the middle of December, and I only had 10 minutes before I had to catch my bus...

Here is the checklist that started it all.....

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S33350518

I find this one a bit more exciting though....

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S33347151


This blog post also marks the 100th post of the year, so I though that was pretty neat to tie these two accomplishments together. I would like to thank you, the reader, for taking the time every once in awhile to sit down and read about my adventures.

I am looking forward to what the future has in store!