The San Mateo County Birding Guide (SMCBG) builds some of its data from the two premier community science projects of the early 21st century: Cornell's eBird and the California Academy of Science's iNaturalist. Each entry in the San Mateo County Birding Guide contains links to eBird hotspots and iNaturalist place pages associated with that location.
Each hotspot page on eBird includes the option to create a bar chart for that site. The bar charts (or histograms) are broken down into four time quadrants per month, for a total of 48 time quadrants for each location. The SMCBG editors keep track of how each hotspot is doing whenever they have reason to revise a site.
When there is data in all 48 time quadrants, we post an "eBird Mission Complete" badge to hail the achievement.
Data on iNaturalist includes not only birds, but all living taxa. San Mateo county has been blessed with some avid iNaturalist users, who have covered the county with observations. It is a rich resource for the all-around naturalist to use. To support this mission, the SMCBG notes those parks which have been sites for bio-blitzes - day-long intensive team searches for all manner of living things. The bio-blitz data presents a slice of life at that park for that specific date.
April 5, 2020