Hello Everyone, As if there wasn't enough excitement from participating in all of Ohio's great Christmas Bird Counts, the excitement can continue through January by helping out with the Ohio Winter Bird Atlas. As previously mentioned on this list-serve, participating in the Winter Atlas is great fun. If you're birding in Ohio during January, you're automatically atlasing! I just wanted to mention to everyone that if you're atlasing or planning on it, you can take advantage of some of the mapping tools available at the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas website to help organize a survey route or remotely investigate habitat possibilities for your winter surveys. The Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas followed in the Winter Bird Atlas' footsteps by taking advantage of the commercially available Ohio DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer to organize a survey grid. PLEASE NOTE: there is one main difference between the two project's survey grids. For every 1 Winter Bird Atlas block there are 6 Breeding Bird Atlas blocks. For example, Winter Atlas Block 62A3 equals Breeding Bird Atlas block 62A3NW, 62A3NE, 62A3CW, 62A3CE, 62A3SW, and 62A3SE. Besides drawing lines in your DeLorme, here are some other mapping options available: #1 Go to http://www.ohiobirds.org/obba2/blockmap/statemap.php to access interactive maps of each Breeding Bird Atlas block. You can simply combine the 6 blocks printed out to make up the one Winter Atlas block. #2 Individual breeding bird atlas blocks in topographic format are available on OBBA2's data entry website http://bird.atlasing.org/Atlas/OH/Main/. Go to view Regions and Blocks and navigate to your blocks of interest and you will be brought to a view showing 6 OBBA2 blocks, which basically equals the 1 Winter Atlas block. By clicking on each of these 6 blocks, you can generate PDF topographic maps that show considerable detail for the landscape. Click "Block Map" once you access each block's profile. These maps can be printed easily and taken into the field. #3 You can also use Google Maps to create customizable maps that show complete Winter Atlas blocks without having to combine 6 different maps from OBBA2's blocks. Here's a link to a map I quickly generated in Google. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=p&om=1&msa=0&msid=11833923897 1239494586.00044324c1d6df2b3d450&ll=40.442505,-81.066055&spn=0.181334,0.3213 5&z=12. You do need to have a Google account to do this but it's just a matter of creating a user account and you're good to go. Email me offline and let me know if you're interested in using Google Maps and I'll email you with more details. Also keep in mind, if you hear Great Horned Owls during your winter Atlas activities, these observations could likely count as territorial records for the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas II. Please let me know if you come across this great species during your surveys. Oh, and Rock Pigeons can be recorded for OBBA2 any time of year! Good birding! Aaron Boone Project Coordinator Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas II (614) 247-6458 ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]