Hi everyone,

Late summer / early fall migration is well underway, and the chances for encountering rarities will steadily increase during the upcoming weeks and months. This is a reminder for those who haven't already done so, that now is a good time to submit reports documenting rare bird sightings from earlier this year (January to the present)! The Ontario Bird Records Committee (OBRC) welcomes and encourages everyone to submit reports! Whether you were the single observer or amongst a throng of observers: we love to receive multiple reports for any rare bird sighting as this strengthens the record and increases the quality of documentation overall!

Submitting a report is easy, at a minimum requiring the date, location and circumstances of your observation along with a description of the bird. Reports may be submitted through the online submission form, with any accompanying media (photo, video, audio, drawings) sent to obrcsecretary@gmail.com.

The review lists for Ontario’s three reporting regions as well as guidelines for reporting can be found here. More discussion/reasons why submitting rare birds reports is so important (and more) can be found here.

NOTE: If you have already submitted a checklist to eBird containing all relevant and complete details of a rare bird sighting (i.e., all fields marked with an asterisk* within the online OBRC submission form), we happily will accept such checklists as your OBRC submission! To submit a eBird checklist, simply print the checklist (from your browser) as a .pdf file and attach it to an email to the secretary along with any media for the report. At this time, the OBRC is not in the position to exhaustively retrieve materials for rare bird reports directly from eBird, we therefore encourage and greatly appreciate observers who spend time to convert/send eBird rare bird sightings as.pdf via email directly to us!

Thank you!

Happy birding,

Gerard Phillips

OBRC Chair