Birdfreak.com Project Updates for August -

Thought it would be good to give an update of the various projects we are working on at the Birdfreak headquarters in Rockford, Illinois. This is just some of the more time-consuming works currently on the agenda.

White-winged Scoter

#1. – NCIOS-Winnebago County Illinois Bird Checklist: Recreating an outdated checklist from scratch to provide abundance charting and newly added species to our county.

Screenshot of the new Bird Checklist

#2. – Focused Bird Conservation Project: This past spring and summer we have been tracking the whereabouts of 14 species of birds in decline in northern Illinois. We are still awaiting more data and plan to have a printed document by mid-October.

#3. – Deer Run Bird Survey: We have a little over three months left of our year-long study of the birds of Deer Run Forest Preserve. The data isn’t precise, but our findings will hopefully provide a baseline to more conservation in the area. This project will be completed in January of 2009.

#4 – Winnebago County Birding Guide: This is an ongoing project but one we hope to officially go live with sometime next year. We have been collecting data on the bird life across Winnebago County and have accumulated a lot of photos for different times of the year for this online guide. You can view the guide in its current stage here.

#5 – Sand Bluff Bird Observatory Website: We are working on a new website for one of the country’s premiere bird banding stations. SBBO provides numerous educational programs and up-close viewing of migrant birds as they are banded and tracked. We hope to have the site running full-throttle for the Fall 2008 banding season.

#6 – Inaugural Christmas Bird Count – Rock Cut: We are working on starting a brand new Christmas Bird Count for our area, making three within the county. It will include areas in Winnebago and Boone Counties. We have submitted our data and are awaiting confirmation of the new count circle.

There are many more projects in the works including the slow-going but progressing book which we will have more details about in Spring 2009 (hopefully).