Since I apparently submitted 1649 checklists to eBird last year, I figured I should explain how.
Some background first: A number of years ago, I went to see what my month lists looked like (actually half-months). According to my records, I had never seen a pigeon in September and there were many similar gaps. In order to avoid this, I decided that I would record every bird every day (and since I was at RPI for the next couple Septembers, it took several years to close that hole).
So, for the last few years, I’ve compiled a daily yard list, a daily work list, a daily driving around list, and normally a daily walk-around-the-neighborhood list. They all sort of fall in between casual observation and any of the other eBird categories (I try to count everything but don’t track time for the most part).
Of those 1600+ checklists:
342 were from the yard
213 from the neighborhood (plus a few from Hardy Pond instead)
162 were at work (plus a few from other schools)
243 were driving around Waltham (and a few from Lexington, Belmont, etc and Middlesex, Essex, and Worcester counties)
That’s almost 1000 right there. Add in the fact that I try to go out on my lunch break daily and do 20 minutes of birding (probably 200-220 days) and it’s probably about 400 full birding trips. Still a good number but not anything like 1600 implies. Breaking places up adds up as well (for example, Beaver Brook North is one place but I have separate checklists for Lot 1, the West Meadow, and Met State for town lines and other reasons).
