Tweets & INWBers -

It is that time of year again ? Ken & Laurie Knittle?s updated county checklists are all available on the Washington Birder website: http://wabirder.com/county_map.html <http://wabirder.com/county_map.html>

This year, Ken & Laurie undertook a massive update of abundance codes for all 39 counties ? thanks to the many who helped with this, but especially to Ken & Laurie for keeping this going and for the enormous update project. If you are looking for info on how abundant species are in each of the counties of WA, check out the lists.

In addition to the checklist updates mentioned Michael Hobbs & I have updated the excel spreadsheet . Both the 'enhanced' version and a plain version are available on the Washington Birder website at: http://wabirder.com/combined_county_list.html <http://wabirder.com/combined_county_list.html>

Every year since 2003 I've updated this checklist, adding new species and county firsts, and revising it to comply with the latest taxonomic updates produced by the AOU & ABA. The latest update includes only a minor taxonomic update (Ferruginous & Rough-legged Hawk switch places!). However, in addition to the many county firsts last year, we added two state firsts: Red-flanked Bluetail and Little Bunting (the Little Bunting has not yet been reviewed by the WBRC, but looks promising). We also removed Sedge Wren, provisionally added to the list last year but later not endorsed by the WBRC.

This year, Michael & I also added two more features to the list: First, there?s now an ?eBird sort order? available ? use this to quickly move back and forth between the AOU taxonomy and eBird?s taxonomy (those sparrows are getting crazy on eBird?.). Also, we added abundance codes for eastern WA, western WA and the state as a whole. These are rough approximations only, based largely on the heuristic that the code would match the most common county code for that species, in that region [For example, if a species was present at code 1 [blue] levels in some counties of western WA, but in eastern WA was most abundant only at code 3 [yellow] levels, then the Western WA code would be Blue, the Eastern WA code would be Yellow and the entire state code would be Blue]. You can also now generate needs lists for Eastern WA, Western WA and the state as whole!

If you are looking for a color-coded way to track your county lists and/or see how abundant any species is in a given county, give the list a try.

With the 'enhanced' spreadsheet, you can generate county needs lists, see which counties you've seen or need any given species, and more. Instructions on using the spreadsheet are on the same page linked above.

Instructions on transferring your data from an older copy of your spreadsheet to the new one are included at the website as well.

I look forward to feedback or suggestions, and would be happy to help troubleshoot problems if you run across them.

Matt Bartels
Seattle, WA
PS - there?s still time to get in you annual list report - form available at: http://www.wabirder.com/forms.html <http://www.wabirder.com/forms.html>