Here are some brief instructions on how to use this web page to display and print a map for these Christmas Bird Count coverage circles. (At the bottom are some notes on modifications to this page.)

1. Select the count from the drop-down list to the right of "Christmas Bird Count".
2. With the count selected, press Tab to move to Draw Circle and press Enter or just click on Draw Circle with your mouse.

The map below will move to the appropriate portion of the state and draw the count circle in red.

The beauty of using Google Maps like this is that you can zoom in and drag the map around to get more detail and/or to show only a portion of the circle area. Or you can zoom out to see how the count circle fits into the surrounding area. (Yeah, we love Google Maps!)

Printing

Please review the following before printing a map.

Browser problems

If you know us, you know we love Firefox and think it's the only browser to use. (We spend untold hours coding around the limitations of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, this page being no exception.) However, maybe the only major problem we have encountered with Firefox is that it simply does not print the overlay boxes on Google maps. It prints the map fine, just not the red box. As initially displayed, the differences aren't great, but they're significant if you zoom in or out. Unfortunately, if you want to print these maps with the overlay, you'll have to use Internet Explorer. We're working on this problem. Update: The latest version of Firefox (2.0.0.12) continues to have this problem rendering polylines, as do several other browsers. We still have to recommend MS Internet Explorer (only) if you want to print the circle boundaries. -- 2.12.2008

Printer Setup

We have optimized this page for the largest printable map -- based on monitor resolution, paper size (8.5 X 11), and Google map requirements.

The displayed map will print best if your margins are set to "zero". To do this go to File>Page Setup in your browser and change all four margin settings to zero. Actually, the browser will not accept exactly zero, as printers do not usually print edge to edge, and entering zero will change to "0.25" or "0.166" or something similar. Don't forget to click OK after keying the changes.

Print the map

Just click Print to print the map as you would any document. Or, you can select File>Print Preview to check the layout before printing. (Note: the rendering engine in Internet Explorer -- what happens between your clicking Print and the displaying of the print dialog -- is sslllooowww, so please wait for it to work.

Again, you can zoom in or out and drag for different portions of the map. What you see in the map area is what will print.

If you're really obsessive, you can click hybrid and (depending on the resolution and data available from Google) see a photo-like view of the topography. All of these should print, though maybe not very clearly.

Printing in Black & White

Google renders their maps in color, and they print fine on color printers. On "monochrome" or black-and-white printers (such as LaserJets) the images are somewhat washed out. We don't know of any good solutions to this. Please contact us if this is a problem.

-- 2.21.2007

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Notes

We don't know why, but the Google API does not zoom in on the red outline exactly the same for all quads. When this happens, one or two of the box borders are just outside the map view on the top and/or the bottom. If you zoom out one notch, you'll see what we mean. Since it's so close, this shouldn't be a problem, but we're continually modifying the code to accomodate this issue. So, if you select a title and don't see the whole red quad border, please click here and let us know.
-- 2.23.2007