Santa Barbara CBC Instructions

Know your assignment — You should have been assigned an area to cover by the count’s organizers. If you’re unclear on where you’ll be birding on count day, or you have any other questions, contact us at  email hidden; JavaScript is required 

Coordinate with your group — If you’ll be birding with other people you should have received contact information for the other people in your group when you got your assignment. Coordinate with your group leader on logistics: where and when to meet, etc.

Follow COVID-19 guidelines — If you are part of a group that includes people from different households, please follow all state and county public-health guidelines.

Follow along on the count day Google spreadsheet titled “124 CASB TALLY” — Enter birds seen by entering your information in the “Observed by” and “Location” columns for any birds you find that no one else has reported yet. No need to add your name if others are already there unless as noted. You may be contacted for more information if necessary.  Note: Access the 124 CASB TALLY with the Google Sheets mobile app to enter updates in the field. If you can’t access this spreadsheet, please tell us your target birds by noon if possible.

Submit your checklists

It’s important to share your checklists or at least tell us your target birds by midday so we can send others out looking for missed species.

• Use eBird. This is the preferred approach. Please share your checklist(s) with the “sb-cbc” eBird user, preferably at the time you submit the list using the mobile app.  If you submit your checklist from the mobile app without sharing, you will need to log in to the eBird website to share it. See Sharing Checklists at eBird for help. 
• If you can’t use eBird, you can submit digital Word document checklists to your Area Coordinator.  See the bottom of this page for links to Word-based forms.
• Group Leaders: you are responsible for your group’s checklist(s) of species identified and the counts for each species. Someone else can record the list, but as group leader you are responsible for its accuracy and submitting final data to your Area Coordinator.

Other documentation — Once you’ve submitted your checklist the other documentation isn’t as time-sensitive. The deadline for submission of the following items is one week after count day.

• Participant and effort form: All group leaders and solo birders need to report their effort (party count, time, and distance) in the format required by the National Audubon Society’s CBC organizers. The easiest way to do this is to fill out the participant form (see below to download). Then email it to your Area Coordinator (see below).

Rarity documentation: Any bird that is marked with an asterisk on the checklist or Google sheet will require additional documentation. The best way to submit that documentation is to put it in your eBird list; see How to document your sightings from eBird for how to do that. As a last resort you can use the fillable PDF (below) and email it to your Area Coordinator.4