Indiana Big Years

About the Indiana Audubon Society Yearly Bird List

While Indiana Audubon does not vet annual listing attempts made by its members, it does provide general guidelines for submission to the annual Indiana Lister’s Article that appears in the Indiana Audubon Quarterly each year.  Those guidelines were originally printed in the May 2022 IAQ and are as follows:

• Birders submitting year lists should follow ABA Code of Ethics and the ABA Recording Rules and Interpretations.
• Birds should only be included on year lists if they appear on Indiana’s Official Bird Checklist, maintained by the IBRC. Potential first state records should only be included after they have been accepted by the IBRC.
• Review list species should be submitted to the IBRC for review and should only be included on a year list if the species is accepted by the IBRC that particular year. 
• Lists should be submitted to the IAS Publications Committee by February 1 of the following year. If any species are still being reviewed by the IBRC by January 31, they can be provisionally included on the list. The list can subsequently be updated if the record is not accepted.
• Year lists that contain more than 300 species should be submitted to the IAS Listing Committee. These lists will only be vetted for errors regarding #2 and #3 above.

Whitney Yoerger and Kristina Lakins are the editors for the Indiana Birder’s List article that appears annually in the Indiana Audubon Quarterly. The deadline to submit your life and annual lists is February 1 of the year after.

Lists that may be sent are

• World
• North America
• ABA
• Indiana
• Indiana county lists
• Property list

You may submit both life and year lists. The lists should be what you saw up to and including December 31, 2022.  eBird users can simply go to their “my ebird” page and find all of the categories to report without any additional work or math to calculate your totals.  You can find the form below.  IAS only needs the number of birds seen and not the actual lists of species.  Please note 50 species is the lower threshold to report a list in most categories.

You can include property lists. If you include property lists please give a brief description of your property: urban yard, suburban yard, or country yard. Also give an approximate size estimate. An urban or suburban yard might be measured in feet such as 50 by 70 feet and a country yard in acres such as 25 acres.

You may include interesting information about your birding activities such as places you birded and milestone birds that you saw.

The ABA list only includes Canada and the United States.  The ABA began including Hawaii in 2017.  The North America list covers everything north of the Columbian-Panamanian border. It also includes the West Indies, Mexico and Central America but not Hawaii.

Indiana lists include all IBRC accepted species on the state checklist. Note: Whooping Crane is now both Indiana and ABA acceptable.

While membership in the IAS is recommended for people who are involved in the list report, it is not a requirement. People who are not members will still have their lists included.  Please consider joining the Indiana Audubon Society, we are not affiliated with the National Audubon Society and depend upon your donations to exist.

The list article will be published in the Indiana Audubon Quarterly (IAQ) May issue each year.

Compiler Volunteers: Whitney Yoerger ([email protected]) and Kristina Lakins ([email protected]).

Happy Birding!

The Indiana 300 Club!

Limpkin photo by Ryan Sanderson