I’m a little late at getting this up, but what can I say it’s been a busy first week and a half of 2012.  Every year I usually have a handful of birding goals or “resolutions” for the coming 12 months.  Some years I have had as many as 10 or 12, other years just 1 or 2.  This year will fall into the latter category.  Every year one of my goals is to see a few new species of birds in Utah--typically I try to get to a benchmark, a 0 or a 5.  I started 2011 with 389 species on my Utah Life List and had hoped to reach 395 species by years end.  I added 4 species falling a few short of my goal.  But what can you do?  So this year I set the lofty goal of reaching 400 species on my Utah Life List--needing to add 7 new species of bird for me.  Okay, make that 6--on January 2nd I finally twitched to southern Utah and added WHITE-TAILED KITE to my list.  My North American nemesis bird and an admirable Utah foe was finally seen--and enjoyed.

My North American and Utah Lifer White-tailed Kite

My second goal, is to enter an average of at least 2 eBird checklists every day.  That would be 724 checklists this year. I’m already off to a good start with 27 checklists in 11 days and think that 2 a day shouldn’t be all that difficult.  It really is just a matter of taking the time to do it.  I think this is a goal that almost everyone can take a stab at.  The easy way for me to do this would be one yard list and one list form my office each day of the week.  Trying to put together 4 lists every weekend shouldn’t be bad either.  The data that is gathered through these checklists is not only invaluable for the data pool, but it is interesting to be able to look and say, thus far in 2012 I have entered 6 HARLAN’S HAWKS (like the one below) into eBird in Utah:

A stunning Harlan's Hawk in Lehi, Utah

Those really are my only two goals for this year.  I would love to go birding out of country somewhere again, and hopefully I will end up doing that.  And of course I always want to take better and better photos.  But the real goals are the two I set above.

I’d like to challenge every one to make the use of eBird one of their personal goals for 2012.  Entering at least 1 checklist a day would be something that is not only reasonable for everyone but not all that difficult.  If you haven’t started yet, you only have to make up a few days worth of checklists--if you are already doing so then right on--and good luck!

Besides that, what are some of your personal birding goals for this year--I’d love to hear what others have planned?