Virginia Beach Pelagics

I hope everyone is excited about the upcoming pelagics as I am! In light of those trips, I wanted to bring to everyone's attention a new eBird hotspot which has been created to help improve reporting on Virginia Beach pelagic trips. As some of you may know, the trips cross between waters that are in two geographic areas: The City of Virginia Beach, and Northampton County. Currently, there is an eBird hotspot for "Virginia Beach Pelagic (general location)" which is located in Northampton County. While this hotspot covers most of the birds seen on these trips, it does not account for the portion of the trip that is VA Beach waters. Those of us who are interested in county listing have set up a new hotspot for "VA Beach Pelagic inshore waters," in an effort to correct this problem. If you are interested in and able to keep track of birds in the different counties, please try to use this hotspot when reporting birds in VA Beach. (Please click each photo below to pull up full size; hovering your mouse over each will then bring up the description at the bottom).

For inshore portions of pelagics out of Lynnhaven Inlet, the "Virginia Beach inshore waters north (Lynnhaven)" hotspot works well. for the portion of pelagics further out at sea, the "Virginia Beach pelagic (general location)" hotspot is best to use.

The Chesapeake Light is located at the yellow pin, and the guestimate of where the pelagic trips go en route to Norfolk Canyon is shown in white.  The red line represents the Virginia Beach boundary in eBird by the 'Closest Point of Land' & the yellow line is the 2.7 mile distance represented in the dialog box below it. Essentially, once you are due north of the light platform, you are already in Northampton County waters, and perhaps a mile or so west as well, depending on the exact vessel trajectory. For extremely rare species, the coordinates should be logged & reported individually so the exact location is well documented.

Unfortunately, the nature of these trips can make it somewhat difficult to determine exactly which county you are in at any given time. Also, doing 30-minute counts is a bit cumbersome and takes time away from searching for birds. Use of the hotspots for inshore and pelagic sightings is a fair middle ground for entry purposes since it doesn't take much effort, but is a valuable separation of data. The best general guideline to offer for pelagics out of Lynnhaven Inlet is if you are west of the Chesapeake Light platform you can safely presume you are in Virginia Beach waters according to eBird's 'nearest point of land' philosophy. While in these waters, it makes sense to use the "Virginia Beach inshore waters north (Lynnhaven)" hotspot. The platform is 17 miles off the coastline, and once you pass it, you are likely in Northampton waters. Here, you may make use of the "Virginia Beach pelagic (general location)" hotspot. On the trips in late January where we might go as far as Norfolk Canyon, there is an additional hotspot at that location if desired. -Matt Anthony & Rob Bielawski

For further information on eBird's "Closest Point of Land" policy, please see this article on the site: http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/1375503

Due to bending in the shoreline from North Carolina to Delaware, Virginia Beach occupies this triangle according to eBird. the red line shown represents the approximate boundary developed from the attempted submission of checklists in the vicinity. clearly, Norfolk Canyon rests in Northampton County waters, and the vast majority of pelagic trips leaving Lynnhaven Inlet also should be noted there once beyond the Chesapeake Light Platform (the blue dot just below the "F" in "Fishing".