Norwich 2022 Bird Quest

2021 was a year for the record books for Norwich Birding, and we're back at it again in 2022. The Norwich 2022 Bird Quest is officially underway, and we've set some ambitious goals for ourselves as we seek to improve on last year's totals. We're setting another high bar in 2022, as we challenge Norwich birders to find 195 species (including at least 5 not found in 2019-2021) and submit 2,500 eBird checklists, with 30 birders submitting those lists.

This is an informal (but serious) challenge to birders—experts and novices, professionals and amateurs, hardcores and wannabes, from near and far—to explore the avian diversity of Norwich, get outdoors, have some fun, share the thrill of discovery, and do some learning in the process.

The Norwich 2022 Bird Quest is very simply meant to engage and inspire birders of all sorts to pay attention, and to keep track. The goal of 195 species in a single calendar year? Arbitrary, definitely a stretch, but possible. Everyone likes a challenge, a quest, maybe even some friendly competition. Set your own goals. Can you find 100 species yourself? Can you identify 25 “lifers” in 2022— species that you’ve never before encountered?

Because keeping careful track of yearlong sightings throughout Norwich will be critical to know where we stand, we’ll use Vermont eBird, a real-time, online checklist program that has revolutionized how the birding community reports and accesses information about birds. Launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, 2022 marks the 18-year anniversary of Vermont eBird, which is managed by VCE as part of our Vermont Atlas of Life and is the very first state portal for eBird. In just over a decade-and-a-half, the checklists shared by bird watchers have helped make Vermont eBird the largest citizen science biodiversity project in the state. To date, 11,937 Vermont eBirders have submitted nearly 542,000 complete checklists, representing all 391 species of birds ever reported from Vermont. Worldwide, more than 730,000 eBirders have contributed over 1 billion bird sightings on over 60 million complete checklists, representing 10,624 species across every country on earth!

Join Us!

OK, how exactly do birdwatchers like you contribute sightings to the Norwich 2022 Bird Quest? If you don’t already have a Vermont eBird account, setting one up is straightforward. Just go to Vermont eBird, watch the 3-minute introductory video via the “Learn More” tab, then hit the “Get Started” tab, and you’ll be off to the races with your own eBird account. Once you get started, there are more resources on the eBird Help pages too.

eBird tracks all kinds of stats from counties to states to countries, but not by towns.  To have your Vermont eBird checklists count, we are using the eBird checklist share feature, which allows you to copy checklists to another user’s account with the click of a mouse. For any Norwich-based Vermont eBird checklist you complete, please share it with the Norwich Bird Questers eBird account. When you submit a checklist to Vermont eBird, you can share it immediately by clicking the “Share w/Others in Your Party” link in the right column of the checklist confirmation page and typing in the username ‘norwich’. Maybe you forgot to share a checklist when you submitted it? Any checklist can be shared at any time by clicking the “Share” link on the Manage My Checklists page.

Want to see how we’ve done in previous years? Check out past years species totals below:

2019
2020
2021

Norwich 2022 Bird List