5MR Birding

5-Mile Radius birding — the concept of 5 Mile Radius Birding aligns a lot with the way the way I began keeping track of birds I came across. I began exploring the habitats closest to my home and found some amazing birds along the way.


This concept was spearheaded by Jen Sanford and it has begun spreading like wildfire! You can find more information on Jen’s website here, and check out the Facebook Group ‘5MR Birding’ if you have an account for more information and info on how to start your own circle!

I have two circles here for a couple of reasons. Since we have covered our Salem patch extensively since 2012 and is where I still do most of my birding, I will be centering my Salem circle from my parents home where I grew up. The area was largely under-birded before Amanda and I began keeping records and have tallied an impressive 215+ species within the borders of Salem alone. It will be interesting to see how the extension of this patch stacks up to our town-level efforts over the years.

The second circle is where I currently live in Plaistow, and this is where I intend to put in a little more work this year. I have some great habitats nearby to explore and lots of places I’ve been meaning to get to. There are a number of locations in this circle that I have been to only once or twice, so I plan to cover some of these hotspots a bit more. This circle is nearly cut in half by the state line, and will give me more motivation to go birding in Massachusetts for a change!

I’ll be posting weekly updates here with what I’ve seen and how it relates to the latest ‘5MR Birding Challenge’. I will loosely be participating in these challenges, you can find out more about 5MR Birding here.


The Circles

Here are the two circles — one centered in Salem and the other in Plaistow. Having focused more on state level listing, the fact that both of these circles span the New Hampshire/Massachusetts border, shown as the Yellow line, will make me venture into Mass more.

2 Responses

  1. Chris Duffy says:

    The 5MR birding is really interesting to me. I’m not sure how much I’m into the competition but as I’ve started using Ebird and birding more consistently I’ve gotten more interested to know my area (Stratham) in a more in-depth way than running from hot spot to hot spot. Although I will always bird the coast!
    I like the idea of really understanding my 5 mile radius and finding more spots to survey. There are a few hotspots in my 5MR (Exeter WTP, GreatBay Discovery Center), but there are a lot of spots I haven’t discovered and my home borders Stratham Hill Park which isn’t surveyed that much.
    I’m going to become more conscious of my 5MR and may join the competition in the future.
    I see you have about 12 spots in each of your circles. Is that intentional or coincidental?
    Incredible pictures in your blog. My birding buddy from Exeter Carlos Guindon is from CR. He teaches conservation ecology in Monteverde. He took me on some amazing birding there a few year ago. I need to get back again!
    Chris

    • Kyle says:

      Hey Chris, thanks for your comments. It really is amazing what you can find right under your nose when you put yourself out there. Stratham is great location for this because of its diversity of habitats, and I would imagine you’ll find some good stuff. And of course, you can’t NOT go to the coast every now and then! The number of pins was not intentional – the Blue locations you’re seeing in the circles represent eBird hotspots and the orange ones are other locations that I want to visit more. There are other small habitats I plan to visit and hopefully add more locations to these maps as I go.

      Thanks for the compliments on our photos…the Photos page on the site is a mix of mine and my wife Amanda’s photography from that trip. It was amazing and a country we will most definitely be going back to! We did a lot of our own birding on the trip, so I look forward to hooking up with a good guide. We stayed at Paraiso Quetzal Lodge in the Talamanca Highlands and then a place in Punta Leona on the Pacific coast – it was incredible. Monteverde is on the list of places to visit one of these days.

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