The recommended dates for the AWC 2016 counts are:
Saturday 9 to Sunday 24, January 2016,
covering 2 weeks and three weekends. However, these dates are for guidance only and counts from any date in January are very welcome. The result of the census and information are used to promote regional and national waterbird and wetland conservation issues.
The data of AWC helps in promoting the designation of internationally important sites such as Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas, Ramsar Sites and nationally protected areas and helps in identifying and protecting important site.
AWC count form is uploaded on the websites of the Wetlands International (http://bit.ly/1JLcikz). I would request you to go through the guidelines given in the form and fill it accordingly. I would appreciate if you would cover as many sites as possible and encourage more participation. If you have participated in previous year’s count for a particular site, kindly cover the site this year also. Please try to cover Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in your vicinity.
We request to fill up the AWC form (attached Excelsheet) after reading the instructions carefully or use the MS-WORD form (attached word file) and please e-mail to awc@wetlands.org and copy toibabnhs@gmail.com. For those states which has State Coordinator for AWC, you can send the AWC form to the State Coordinator also with and mark CC to the above email addresses. By post the forms can be sent to Bombay Natural History Society at its Mumbai address, as a last resort.
AWC and eBird:
This is a new option to submit your AWC data. For each wetland covered, upload your counts to eBird and then fill out the Google AWC site information form (Google AWC site information form here). This combination is eBird+AWC is new, and there is likely to be some confusion, so if you have any questions, please do ask by sending an email to Suhel Quader birdcountindia@gmail.com !
Thanks for your continuous participation in AWC.
Sincerely,
Dr. Raju Kasambe
IBA Programme Manager,
Bombay Natural History Society,
Hornbill House, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Road,
Mumbai-400001, Maharashtra, India.
Ph. 022-22821811 (Board)
Ph. 022-22818957 (Direct)