Happy Thanksgiving From the Cornell Lab

Here at the Cornell Lab we have a lot to be thankful for—most of all to our friends, supporters, members, Facebook fans, and citizen-science participants. You’re a group that’s now more than 200,000 strong.

This fall, you even helped us design your own holiday card. During a three-week campaign on Facebook, our fans submitted photos, voted on winners, and spread the word among their friends. We received 632 photo entries in a single week. After thousands of votes, the five photos above were chosen as the winners, which we incorporated into our holiday eCard (see below for the card and lists of finalists).

The response is characteristic of the amazing activity on our Facebook page. Just a year old, our page now has more than 55,000 fans. Everyday we see birders of all levels and ages participating. From posting pictures of feeder birds, to gorgeous photos of unusual species, to asking and answering questions and helping others with identifications, our fans are online 24 hours a day, catching up with each other and finding out what’s new at the Cornell Lab.

As we look forward to 2012, your participation on Facebook and elsewhere on our site—FeederWatch, Nest Cams, eBird, on our Macaulay Library archive, at All About Birds, on our YouTube channel just to mention a few—we are grateful for you, the people who keep us going. Thank you for your continued support—and see you on Facebook!

If you haven’t seen it, here’s the card:

Click through to the larger version, then feel free to copy the link and send it to your own friends. Or visit us on Facebook and share the card from there.

We don’t have room to acknowledge each of our 632 photographers individually, but we are grateful for everyone’s participation. And we’d like to recognize the winners, finalists, and the 20 others who made our shortlist:

Winners:
1. Anne Elliott
2. Donna Salko
3. Kim Taylor
4. Barbara Blaisdell
5. Graham McGeorge

Finalists: Eva Creel, Zach Heaton, Bill Heban, Pete Larkins, Jack Saunders.
Shortlist: Ryan Ankeny, Cissy Beasley, Heidi Betts, Charlotte England, Scott Evans, Jenny Gandert, Lana Gramlich, Rebecca Holberton, Jim Jackson, Mindy Jost, Martin Keus, Ron Kube, Melissa Penta, Becky Potmesil, Eric Reuter, Bev Short, J.C. Stormer, Yvonne Sufrunco, Judy Turner, Kathleen Turner.