SPES’ youngest bird monitoring volunteer, 12-year old Liron Gertsman,
was the happy recipient of a recent prize given by the online birding website eBird for submitting the 100 millionth observation to their database.
He had been diligently entering his data for the 24 species he saw at the Maplewood Conservation Area that day when the American robin entry gave him the win. When staff at eBird called Liron to share the good news, he was understandably surprised: “I read the post on eBird in July and I can’t believe that my observation was the 100th million. Thanks so much! P.S. I know it will appear a bit surprising that I’m 12 years old”.
It was no surprise to SPES staff that Liron would have been responsible for keeping great records of his sightings. He has been attending our monthly bird counts and taking photos for SPES for over 2 years and is a model birder for our program.
eBird is a real-time, online checklist program, that has changed the way that the international birding community reports and accesses information about birds. Launched by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, eBird provides rich data sources for basic information on bird abundance and distribution at a variety of spatial and temporal scales.
More info on SPES’s birding program
More info on Liron’s big win