Birding Like Crazy
I appear to be the winner of the J anuary 2019 5-mile-radius birding challenge and of all the prizes that come with that honor. Just kidding, there are no prizes except for the puzzled/admiring faces of your friends when you tell them about what you did for the last month. The challenge was to fill gaps in eBird where no one had birded a given hotspot (within your 5MR) during that week in January. More people should bird here. It's a tunnel bridge! In late December, bored and bedridden, I decided to start making a list of places I might go birding for the challenge. I looked at every one of the many, many hotspots in my 5MR to see which ones had the requisite gaps. I started making my list longhand, but quickly realized that this was a job for a spreadsheet. Soon I had completed my list with colored boxes to show where gaps were in each of the four sections of the month. I figured it would be fun to try a few new spots and get my year list started. ...
