Summary

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• Count magpies whenever you travel your regular route, preferably at least a couple times per week.
• Report your counts to us by email (see below) to magpie-mail@magpiemonitor.org
• Report any dead birds you see to Department of Health: www.westnile.ca.gov and note dead magpies on your data sheets.
• Keep mosquitoes off yourself.  Do not stay outside if mosquitoes are out.

• >Please count magpies whenever you walk or ride regularly (your "route"), preferably at least a couple times per week (except when you are away).  The more frequent and longer term the counts are the better.  Data from counters that extends over one year or more are very valuable.  Magpies shift their patterns on a daily and seasonal basis – this is one of the reasons that we need many people doing frequent and long-term counts.
• Information to note: Date, your route, time started and ended, numbers of magpies in each section of your route, numbers seen and numbers only heard.  Options to include in your notes: what magpies are doing (in tree, on ground foraging, flying over, etc), any environmental conditions, weather, what is going on in fields, lawns that might affect birds.
• Divide your counts up into fields, street blocks, and other semi-ecologically relevant units - then name and define your units so we know where they are.  It is very helpful to us if you describe your route by streets and/or make a map of your route using yahoo or google maps or similar (http://maps.google.com/).   You don't have to concentrate on counting your whole ride/walk - pick sections you want to count regularly that are likely to have magpies.
• Email in your data reports to magpie-mail@magpiemonitor.org and note “Route, your name” in subject line. i.e. Subject: Route Jane Doe
• If you have questions/comments for us to reply, note “Magpie Question” in subject line (you’ll get a reply quicker that way).
• Report your counts once per month by email.  If easy for you to use Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet program, attached is a sample excel sheet to report counts.  If that doesn't work easily for you, just list them in the text of emails.  Please make magpies your priority species - count and note those you see, and also those you hear.  Count only those you know to be unique individuals - if not sure if you are double-counting an individual, do not count it.  Counts of zero are just as important as non-zero counts.
• Dead Birds: Report dead birds on the Dept of Health hotline www.westnile.ca.gov or 877-WNV-BIRD.   Also, note any dead magpies on your report to me: location, date, time.  We analyze the Dept of Health dead bird data – so your reports to them are valuable.  The Dept of Health cannot pick up and test every dead bird.  My laboratory receives a sample of all the birds submitted to the Dept of Health.  We analyze those samples for DNA and will determine whether magpies, crows, and jays in California have suffered a loss in their genetic diversity due to West Nile Virus.
• Keep mosquitoes off yourself (see recommendations at the Dept of Health web site: www.westnile.ca.gov).
  
•  Audio clip of magpie sounds if you need help to identify them: http://www.enature.com/guides/play_bird_real.asp?recnum=BD0031

Thanks so much for volunteering to count – we can not do this without volunteers like you!  We are open to suggestions on how to make this process better. Any questions or ideas?  – send an email with notation in Subject line "question about Magpie Monitors" – please be patient for a reply.
Our contact email is magpie-mail@magpiemonitor.org

Click here to learn about Saturday 5-minute Magpie Counts