Big Atlas Weekend – June 25-27

This exciting new event, Big Atlas Weekend, is a fun way for birders from across the state to document breeding birds and come together as a birding community. For many birds in the Northeast, breeding peaks in late June. It’s a great time to confirm breeding and fill gaps in the Maine Bird Atlas data.

This event is being coordinated across four states that are conducting Breeding Bird Atlases right now—New York, Maine, Maryland and DC, and North Carolina.

Schedule

• June 23 @ 7 pm – Kickoff with guest speaker (all states) pre-registration required
• June 24 @ 6:30 pm – Weekly Atlas Q&A with a Big Atlas Weekend focus meeting link
• June 25-27 – Big Atlas Weekend! (all states)
• June 30 @ 7 pm – Awards ceremony (all states) pre-registration required

How to Participate

Observe birds from your home, in your backyard, on a walk, or wherever you wish to see birds and record your observations including date, time, location, species, and what the bird is doing. Then submit your observations to the Maine Bird Atlas, learn how here.

All observations submitted between 6:00 pm Friday, June 25 and 11:59 pm Sunday, June 27 count toward this special competition. And every bird sighting helps us learn more about Maine’s birds.

Challenges and Prizes

The Big Atlas Weekend will have prize opportunities for birders of all skill levels, ranging from first-time Atlasers to experienced birders conducting grassland and nocturnal surveys. One prize winner will be selected in each of the following categories to win a Cornell Lab or Ornithology Bird Academy course of their choosing, and as a special thank you for participating, every atlaser who submits a checklist will be given free access to the Be a Better Birder 1: Size and Shape course.

Categories for Prizes:

• Complete Atlas checklist for the first time ever
• Complete Atlas checklist with at least one coded species
• Complete checklist with at least one confirmed species from a priority block
• Complete checklist with nocturnal effort from a priority block
• Complete checklist with at least one confirmed grassland species
• Complete checklist of 5+ minutes for a priority block with <20 hours of diurnal effort
• Complete checklist of 5+ minutes for a priority block with no visits

Interstate Competition

Just to make this event even more exciting, the Atlas team has set up a friendly competition between four states that are currently conducting Atlases: New York, Maine, Maryland-DC, and North Carolina.
Let’s all get out atlasing between June 25 and June 27 so that Maine can claim bragging rights for the inaugural Big Atlas Weekend!