eBirders
We recently launched a new service called 'eBird Alerts'. The first alert we have available is the "ABA Rarities" alert, which lists all of the rarities reported in the ABA area of Code 3 and higher. This simple feed will keep you up to date on all the rare birds seen recently, like the Ivory Gull in Georgia (!) or the first North American record of Amazon Kingfisher from TX a few days ago.
We're soon going to launch another service called "State Needs Alert". This one will compare your list of birds in a given state against all the new reports coming into eBird for that state, and list the reports of species you have yet to see in that state. This tool will be great for people interested in keeping abreast of their state lists. Next iteration of this will be "County Needs Alert", as in some places (e.g., California) counties are huge, and people are really interested in things at this level.
My question to this group is, now that we've started heading in this direction, that is feeding data directly from eBird into your email inboxes (at your request only of course), what types of other feeds might you find interesting?
Thanks
Team eBird
Brian, Chris, and Marshall
I am not all that interested in the "ABA Rarities" alert because I'm not likely to make special trips to Texas or Florida solely for chasing rarities. However, I am excited at the prospect of alerts for state and county rarities. Those are lists that I care more about than the ABA list. I would also like to be able to define a region – either a certain radius (e.g., 200 miles) or group of states – for tracking sightings that don't appear on my life list.
ReplyDeleteI second the suggestion to think local. Alerts on rarely occurring migrants, for example, would be awesome. Nice for listers, but also a fantastic educational resource for non-experts looking learn local occurrence patterns. Alerts for things like an upcoming window of time to look for Nelson's Sparrows and Cave Swallows in the northeast, Jaegers in eastern Colorado, etc.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with John. I addition to a state and county feed--I would be interested in say a Northeast US feed (which may include those states shown on the various regional ABA checklists)
ReplyDeleteGreat addition team E-bird--keep up the great work!
I'm definitely interested in state and county needs alerts. Once they are up, I'll probably unsubscribe to the ABA rarities feed.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of state and county "need" lists. I'd also like to see state rarity alerts even if I have seen them.
ReplyDeleteDo you have the ability to customize rarity alerts; like selecting the surrounding states only?
The ABA-area alert isn't very user-friendly at the moment. Since they're mostly mega-rarities, the repetetive eBird reports make that feed hard to read. A nice way to correct this would be if the default state of the list was collapsed, showing only the most recent record for a given species in a given county, and indicating whether any of the reports were confirmed. If you were interested, you could click on that to expand and see all 25 records for the Ivory Gull, for example.
ReplyDeleteI'm very excited about the prospect of state and county feeds. There could be a two-tiered option. At one level, you could receive an email if you didn't have the bird on your state/county eBird list. As another option, you could receive an email if any filtered species was reported. This would be nice because it can be cumbersome to regularly check the Google gadget for your state.
But I'm not only interested in the county I live in. I'm also interested in nearby counties, counties I've lived in previously, and other counties I have lists for. So, it would be great to be able to select from an entire list of states and counties to receive alerts for.
Year-listing options would be nice as well. Do you want the feed to notify you if you've never seen it in the county, or just if you've never seen it this year?
I'm all for this and can see the benefits of it especially if it encourages more listers to contribute. That said I hope eBird does not come to be seen as primarily a listing tool as this could be a turn off to some contributors. I know this is not the intent of the eBird team but impressions are important here. Also I'm all for transparancy and data sharing but some birders may not want their sightings going out in alerts, for e.g. if the sighting in question is a sensitive species or on private property (I know this has been discussed elswhere but it's worth keeping in mind.) Finally I hope some non-listing related enhancements will be rolled out in the near future as well. For example hierarchical location structures etc. (I'm not sure what all is in the works for the next major version if eBird??). Specifically with regard to alerts I'd be interested in seeing when new birds of the year are submitted to the various geographic areas. Thanks!!
ReplyDeleteJust to be clear, I am not anti-listing! I do listing just about every time I go out birding (now w/ eBird I do "checklisting" almost every time I go out!). It is one of a variety of aspects of birding that is appealing. In fact eBird might provide somewhat of a bridge across the continuum of listing interests among birders.
ReplyDeleteI am also in favor of state and county alerts not only by life list but by year list. It is a great feature for even nonlisters who might be interested in alerted when a certain species starts being seen in the spring.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that puzzles me. The new eBird alerts show comments. Cornell announced a few months ago that it was going to start making species comments available but the Alerts is the only place I've seen that happen. What's up with that?
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Mr. Swift. There seems to be a shift at ebird, placing an emphasis on listing. I'm interested in feeding data to people who will use it for research and hopefully, eventually, increasing the chances of birds species to contnue living on this planet with us. I am not at all interested in feeding information to the public so that they can chase all over the country for the next elusive species. Having witnessed this behavior in action recently, I find it utterly distasteful. My inclination is to not be part of it.
ReplyDeleteLike many others who've commented, I do indeed keep county lists, and I use the eBird exploration features many times per week.
I've never thought about having "arrival alerts" for migrants, but now that I think about it, I like the idea. Only I wouldn't just want an alert 1 week. A single stray sighting is not interesting to me, a steady stream of individuals being reported, indicating that the species migration is on, now that's more interesting. Of course, the trickle might be more spread out in fall than in spring, etc., so I imagine it might take a little more work on eBird's part to sift properly through the data.
Four features I'm just dying to see on eBird are the hierarchical lists, being able to save favorite graphs & charts (saving locations, time frames, species, etc.), fewer screens to click through when trying to bring up a report/graph, and the ability to define a radius for filtering data to desired area.
While I would certainly gladly subscribe to State and/or County Needs Alerts, it is sort of an extra tool on top of what already available.
ReplyDeleteI use the View and Explore Data>>Departures feature sorted by most recent date to learn what people have seen recently in various counties in which I have an interest. I bookmark them so the review process is fast. Despite having those bookmarks, I don't look at most of them very often because I don't normally go driving hither and yon. (I realize that this tool does not show unreviewed rarities, so there is a hole there that rarities alert would fill.)
I use eBird extensively because I want to contribute to science so I contribute a lot of data from a relatively small geographic radius in which my normal activities of daily living take me.
I agree with other posters that focusing too much on 'listing' can certainly turn people off. Driving hither and yon to see one more species seems counterproductive (adding to climate change and the eventual destruction of more species perhaps?) "The Big Year" is certainly a study in narcissistic behavior. Quite appalling. Sorry for being off topic.
eBirders
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone for these comments. Part of our desire to push out these kinds of 'alerts' it to bring more immediacy to eBird. We get a lot of criticism about the stale nature of the data, and people who like birds want to know about what is being reported in near real time.
I agree we need to walk a fine line with listing vs. science. Our goal is to make the two complimentary. We want to engage people who bird in lots of different places to input complete lists of birds. These are the most useful for analysis. We won't loose our science focus, trust me. All these tools are designed to collect more data--data that will be used in scientific analysis.
Our model is to bring as many people who like birds into the eBird fold as possible, and then try to steer then in the direction of collecting more meaningful data. Our analysts can sort the wheat from the chaff in that regard. But we stand by the tenet that 'all data are valuable', you just need to know its limits.
I suspect most of the people spending time reading this blog already do things the 'right' way, and thus you are our core audience. That's why it's nice to tap into your thoughts about some of the things we're developing, and directions we're heading.
Thanks again
Brian
eBirders
ReplyDeleteRegarding a 'shift at eBird', it might seem that way from some of the 'bells and whistles' we've launched lately, but also note our two major data collection initiatives recently launched: the eBird Site Survey; and eBird County Birding. Both of these address specific data deficiencies in the eBird data set. The Site Survey is designed to gather more repeated samples from the same locations, whereas the County Birding initiative is designed to get new samples from under-birded areas, and a collection of 'random counts'.
Both of these things will add power to our ability to model birds using eBird data.
Thanks
Brian
It would also be sweet to be able to customize the list of species you wanted alerts for.
ReplyDeleteNot sure why we need state and county alerts when you can just log in to the Google Gadget to see the rarities reported by state for the past several days.
ReplyDeleteI spotted two mature bald eagles over the Hackensack River in Hackensack, NJ behind the Costco Warehouse on 1/9/10 around 12:30 p.m. Four miles north is Oradell Reservoir where they known to nest there and witnessed birds. Surprised to see two at same time. Also saw another on Wednesday of same week in general area, flying south along river. Cool
ReplyDeleteI would like an alert for specific species for specific multiple US states and Canadian provinces, specific countries, or all North America. The Trumpeter Swan Society is trying to gather sightings and habitat data for Trumpeter Swan, Tundra Swan, and Trumpeter/Tundra. TTSS volunteers each are covering multiple states. I am covering Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and other states this winter. This summer I will be following eastern Manitoba and western Ontario.
ReplyDeleteThe 2010 North American Swan Survey will be this year. It is done every 5 years and is compiled by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from both Canadian and US aerial and ground surveys. Accessing recent sightings via alerts might mean more effective use of resources.
I just want to echo the comments of others - it would be nice to be able to subscribe to/view state and county year list needs.
ReplyDeleteThis might particularly help spur some of the more veteran, experienced birders whose observations I'm sure you'd love to have to use eBird more.
I think that there should be an alert for rare things more locally. (Like an ABA Rarity State and County alert).
ReplyDeleteI'd like to add another vote of support for adding county and year list alerts. I'd personally find those useful and it seems I am not alone. I've spoken to a number of people that have stopped submitting reports of certain birds so that they can continue to get reports of those birds in their state list alerts (which they continue to value). Greater flexibility in how people generate their alerts would seem to be widely appreciated and encourage wider usage. I'm still frustrated by the lack of ebird adoption among the birding community in my area, largely for reasons like this.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all your excellent work!