Date: 7/8/25 11:38 am From: Paul Lehman via groups.io <lehman.paul...> Subject: Fw: [sbcobirding] a 40-year progression of the Santa Barbara County species total
As alluded to by Jamie in his message, below, this listing of chronological new county birds is mostly (though not entirely) correct for the past 20 years. Given that it is just a listing of first eBird reports and not the actual complete record, a fair number of these entries are not from the first day a particular bird was seen, which could be day or two earlier. It also thus may well not reflect who the actual finder of the bird was.
But in going back through this list for just the past 20 years, I did note at least three entries that were not correct, given eBird's patchy coverage of older records. For example, the first county records of Stejneger's Petrels were in the 1990s, not in 2010; the first Parakeet Auklets were in the late 1980s, not in 2009; and the first Nelson's Sparrows were multiple birds in the late 1980s, not in 2005. If one goes even farther back, this listing gets less and less accurate given the incompleteness of the eBird record from those bygone days. Heck, there are "first records" of species listed here that are off by a mere 100 years!
No doubt an interesting and illuminating listing. But definitely with its limitations.
Paul Lehman
On Monday, July 7, 2025 at 08:09:26 PM PDT, Jamie Chavez <almiyi...> wrote:
For those who might be wondering which bird species have been added over time this can reliably be found at eBird. I think the list going back 20 years is probably sequentially correct, although there are a couple of birds that show in eBird that aren't included in the total (Trumpeter Swan, Vega Gull... yet).
Here is the list:https://ebird.org/region/US-CA-083/bird-list?rank=lrec
Jamie M. Chavez
Santa Maria, CA
On Monday, July 7th, 2025 at 12:11 PM, Paul Lehman via groups.io <lehman.paul...> wrote:
I am writing a short history of the evolution of my missive "The Birds of Santa Barbara County, California" (BOSB) for the Santa Barbara Audubon Society newsletter. A little aside that this project generated was how the total number of species recorded in Santa Barbara County has surged forward over the past 40+ years. The totals (without the Channel Islands) have been as follows:
1982 (my original Masters thesis version of BOSB): 412 species
1994 (book version of BOSB published): 454 species
2025 (online version of BOSB as of 1 July): 506 species
So, quite the surge in the number of species over all these years. If one includes the Channel Islands, that adds an additional 4 or 5 species.
