The Mendocino coast is a winter birding hotspot, with more than 130 species regularly found on each of our Christmas Bird Counts. Instead of trying to review all of them in one presentation, and wearing everyone out, we have created a series of video tutorials on the Mendocino Audubon YouTube Channel.

Look under “Playlists” for “Birding Tutorials.” There you will find a recording of the last time we tried, and failed, to get through a slide show in under two hours. You will also find ten shorter, focused videos focused on certain taxonomic groups, providing more detail on what to look for when trying to identify these birds in the field. These let us spend the extra time to really get into the weeds on some of the more challenging aspects of birding: Raptors, Owls, Woodpeckers, Sparrows and Finches, Grebes, Cormorants, and Gulls. You can go through those at your own pace, skipping through the stuff you already know and slowing down to let the new information soak in.

Having created all that educational material, we now want to find out how well it worked, so we are going to run a photo-quiz via Zoom. We did this last year and it was a lot of fun, but the slides were too good, so everyone easily identified the birds. We all know they don’t pose for us in the field like they do in those glamor photos, so this year we will throw in some slides that are a little more like real birding! Don’t worry, it won’t be too tough, and we grade on a curve anyway. It should be fun, informative, and a good tune-up for winter birding season.

David and Tim are the compilers of the Manchester and Fort Bragg Christmas Bird Counts, and past and current Presidents of the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society.

Zoom link for Meeting.