Chip Notes - eBird Buzz

What are the problem IDs?

2011-03-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

eBirders

We recently published a news item highlighting the issue that many birders have identifying crows and ravens:

http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/crows_and_ravens

We plan to do more pieces like this in the future, mostly focused on the challenges of identifying common birds. The Carpodacus finches is another group that springs to mind. Many birders over-report Purple Finches in places where House Finches are common. The idea is to draw attention to some of the most frequently misidentified groups of birds in eBird, and help beginning birders get a better grasp on range, seasonality, voice.

Rare and unusual birds are easy for eBird editors to handle, as they are always flagged for review. But the real problem lies in the misidentification of species pairs where both are common in a region.

What other groups of birds do you think we should highlight in this way? Accipiters are a no-brainer for inclusion!

Team eBird

To share or not to share, that is the question

2011-02-17T07:36:00.000-08:00

We' like to take an informal poll here, since you all are some of our most active and thoughtful eBirders.

A couple years back we released "Checklist Sharing" with some fanfare. this was something we wanted for a long time an allowed to friends (or 20 friends) to go birding together, to have one volunteer to do the data entry, and then to copy the checklist automatically to their friend's account. The others that received copies could still edit the checklist and eBird would be able to track the changes and still store a master copy that was essentially the sum of all the lists, and all are linked together in our database. Checklist sharing has been a huge success, and is a great way to expose new people to eBird, especially since you can share a checklist with someone who doesn't have an eBird account yet by just entering their email address.

However, we are wondering whether we picked the right term to describe the process. Checklist sharing might suggest that you just want to let someone know what you saw, whether or not they were there. In fact, this has been a problem, since some people have clicked "share" and entered a listserv address in the sharing field. I'm sure you all have seen this at least once on the listserv. And the problem is that anyone who clicks the link then gets a copy of the list in their eBird account, implying that they actually saw the bird. We have the "email" link to allow people to post their lists to listservs, and checklist sharing was obviously intended for another purpose. It is clear, that the term "Share" does not instantly convey what is going on.

So our questions for you all are as follows:

1) Is there a better term or way to describe this process that would make it clearer what is happening. We are considering an "Add people to this checklist" after data entry as an alternative. Of course, we'd need to have short links (on the "Checklist Edit" page and the "Manage My Observations") too, and those currently read "Share". Would "Add others" be better?

2) Is the term "checklist sharing" already too ingrained in the eBird lexicon that changing it now would just make things even more confusing. We of course need to cater to our long-term users, our occasional users, and first-time users we hope to attract tomorrow.

Any and all thoughts are welcome. Please just comment below, let us know what you think, an why. We aren't sure what direction we'll go, and your feedback will help. Thanks!

More occurrence maps being published

2011-02-17T07:26:00.000-08:00

We haven't posted much here recently, and are sorry for this. The winter doldrums have been a time where we have been working hard on several things at eBird, and we'll be sharing these with you here soon.

One of these has been gearing up for publishing lots more occurrence maps. Since the last post 15 December we have posted 16 new maps (involving 17 species!). Over the next month we plan to put up a lot more, so please check in to the Occurrence Maps page regularly and watch for the *NEW* ones!

As always, we welcome comments on the maps here. New species since 15 Dec include:

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (Tyrranus forficatus)
Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris)
Harris's Sparrow (Zonotrichia querula)
Lesser Goldfinch (Spinus psaltria)
Rock Wren (Salpinctes obsoletus)
Orchard Oriole (Icterus spurius)
Pacific/Winter Wren (Troglodytes pacificus/hiemelis)
White-eyed Vireo (Vireo griseus)
Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris)
Black-throated Gray Warbler (Dendroica nigrescens)
Yellow-throated Warbler (Dendroica dominica)
Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) [not animated -- fine scale]
Kentucky Warbler (Oporornis formosus)
Pine Warbler (Dendroica pinus) [not animated]
Mountain Bluebird (Sialia currucoides)
Dusky Flycatcher (Empidonax oberholseri)

eBirders have provided some great questions and comments about the strengths and weaknesses of these maps. These really help us to refine them in the future. We look forward to more feedback!

Five more dyamic migration maps

2010-12-15T14:09:00.001-08:00

All,

We have posted five more dynamic migration maps on the "Occurrence Map" page. The new species are:

Willow Flycatcher
Eastern Bluebird
Blackpoll Warbler
White-throated Sparrow
Western Meadowlark

As before, comments are welcome below. Thanks to all for the comments on the first round of maps.

Best,
Marshall Iliff

eBird animated occurrence maps -- first batch

2010-12-06T12:24:00.000-08:00

eBirders,

Spoiler alert: if you like quizzes, and want to figure out this map quiz before seeign a list of potential answers, go to our homepage story before reading on.

We are excited to announce our new "Occurrence Maps" feature, which you can find under the About eBird tab or through links from the new story on the homepage. We have released a few of these in the past, but thanks to a grant from TeraGrid and several years of research, we are finally able to start sharing more of these maps. These maps are really the heart and soul of eBird, since they showcase how your daily eBird submissions are being put to use for science. We are excited about the possibilities that these models hold and will continue to share results and news related to how these are being used.

Starting this week, we will be publishing these maps on the new eBird "Occurrence Maps" feature. Here we provide a short analysis of the patterns you can see, along with an invitation to comment on this blog. If you notice interesting things, have comments on our analysis, or have anything else to share, please post a message below!

This first batch includes ten species, and we will continue to publish five new ones each week. The following species are the ones in our first run:

Northern Cardinal
American Pipit
Brown-headed Nuthatch (not animated)
Red-headed Woodpecker
Western Tanager
Wood Thrush
Swainson's Hawk
Dickcissel
Grasshopper Sparrow
Olive-sided Flycatcher

All of us at eBird think these maps are one of the coolest things we have seen in the bird world in a long time. Not all of them ae perfect, but some are very hard to find any fault with. We are confident that with more eBird data and continued research, these will continue to get more and more accurate.

Again, we invite your comments on these maps so please let us know what you think below!

Marshall Iliff for Team eBird

Sneak peek at new eBird data entry

2010-11-08T06:37:00.000-08:00

eBirders

We are working at the moment on a redesign of the online data entry forms. These pages have changed little since 2002, and we've found that a growing number of you want more flexibility in how to record the birds you see. The old process left little room for building in more options, so we're moving the whole process into a new and better (hopefully!) format.

One of the biggest visual changes will be moving from a three column format to a single column format. Internet research shows that it's tough for people to scan across the three column design, and that it's easier for folks to use the checklist if it's just in a single column. This will also improve eBird's usability on mobile devices.

In addition to this change, we're building in the ability to customize the checklist page with user defined preferences. These will include the ability to display comments boxes, age-sex info, breeding codes (a new addition), and a show/hide subspecies option. We feel strongly that the core processes of eBird need to remain simple for everyday birders, but that customization for experts is required. By building in this kind of flexibility, it paves the way for us to add increased data recording options in the future (e.g., heard only, count/don't count this bird, etc.).

So we're excited about this new development, and we're just now in the process of internally testing the new functionality. We would like to test the new data entry on a group of hardcore eBirders, as well as some beginners, to ensure we're on the right track. We hope to start that process sometime in December, or early in the new year.

Thanks

Team eBird

"Summer" Bird Movements

2010-07-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

We have recently had an interesting discussion of summer bird movements on our local birding list. People have noticed a number of birds showing up in their yards and birding patches. I thought this may have some interest to eBirders since eBird, and the eBird Site Survey in particular, provide a great way to gain insight into summer bird movements. Movements and discussion is focused on Tompkins County, New York, but are broadly applicable. Enjoy.

Many species move in significant numbers at this time of year -- far more than the modest level of birding activity suggests. While shorebirds are well known for July movements, many landbirds are also moving. By late July, many of these birds are southbound migrants (Least Flycatcher, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Yellow Warbler) and others are likely birds moving shorter distances to molt or gain mass prior to migration. Surprisingly little is known about these late summer movements. For me, they have become one of the most interesting aspects of bird distribution.

I've mentioned on cayugabirds and Chip Notes that I have been taking part in the eBird Site Survey where I try to do the same counts as often as I can. This means that I watch from my yard most mornings for thirty minutes and have spent most evenings on the deck. I also do a couple loops through Monkey Run at least once a week.

Here are some of the more interesting birds that Jessie and I have found at Monkey Run doing our eBird site surveys in the last couple of weeks. The list below includes species that we had not seen since the first week of June (along with the first date this "fall" that we detected them). This list does include a couple species that we had seen in another part of Monkey Run, but which we are sure these are "new" individuals (adults only).

Hooded Merganser (13 July)
Black-billed Cuckoo (14 July)
Solitary Sandpiper (15 July)
Chimney Swift (19 July)
Least Flycatcher (18 July)
Eastern Kingbird (18 July)
Blue-headed Vireo (18 July)
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (27 July)
Yellow Warbler (15 July -- date first obvious new individual arrived)
Myrtle Warbler (24 July)
Louisiana Waterthrush (15 July)
Black-throated Green Warbler (27 July)
Blackburnian Warbler (28 July)
Canada Warbler (24 July)
Eastern Towhee (28 July)
Savannah Sparrow (27 July) -- probably detection issue at an area I don't check too often
Indigo Bunting (27 July)
Bobolink (15 July)

I also must mention the numbers of House Finches that have been flying over each morning since about five days ago--yesterday I had a flock of nine, but each morning there have been singles, and small flocks. Before that, we hadn't seen or heard one in the yard since early June.

The intent here is not to point out how great Monkey Run is, but to showcase how many interesting things we can find, literally in our own backyards by looking closely and taking note. There are some great natural areas that receive very little attention throughout the Americas. I'm certain that many of these would turn up equally interesting patterns (and rarities) with a similar level of effort.

It's amazing to think what we could learn if all every birder would pick a different spot and try to walk through there once a week (or more if you want). Then enter it in eBird, where everyone has access to the data and where there are a variety of tools to facilitate our ability to see these patterns, look at arrival dates and high counts--even at a very local level.

Find out more about the eBird Site Survey here:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about/eBird_Site_Survey

Chris Wood

eBird & Neotropical Birds Project Leader
Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York
http://ebird.org
http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu

Global eBird -- assistance welcomed

2010-05-27T13:16:00.000-07:00

We have been rather silent here, mostly because we have been furiously working on an ambitious new direction: Global eBird!! Our World Series effort mid-month was largely to raise additional money for this project, and we are pleased to say it was a great success. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

We are now nearing the finish line, which means that it will soon be possible to enter bird sightings from anywhere in the world in eBird. This will allow birders to track their world life list in eBird, to begin creating a useful data resources for every country on earth, and to truly store their complete birding histories within eBird. This has been a long term goal of ours, and we are excited to be able to release this.

However, it will be important to understand that Global eBird will be in beta form for a long time. Basic eBird functionality will be there: any entry will be tagged to country and state based on the point plotted; all bird species in Clements 6.4 will be available; and new listing options will be available (for all countries and states in the world, as well as new regions like Western Palearctic, Australasia, Africa, etc.).

However, it will likely be a long time before checklists are developed that will bring Global eBird out of beta form. As many of you know, it is thanks to hundreds of volunteers and thousands of hours of work that eBird data entry is so easy from most areas in the Americas. We now have state-specific checklists for most countries in North American and county-specific checklists for many USA states. These checklists quickly provide the most probable birds for these regions on the date that you enter, and this also guides our data quality process. These checklists fuel the "xxx is an excellent observation" messages, which can be cumbersome on the poorer checklists but are essential to prevent errors and educate our users about what sightings are rare or unusual. (We hope that most people love these messages, rather than dread them!) So much of eBird depends on these "filters" running in the background, that we can never consider eBird fully functional until we have top-notch filters in place.

With this in mind, we are here making a call for help. Our staff is limited and our expertise outside the Americas even more so. If you know a country or region in the Eastern Hemisphere, we would LOVE your help in creating a checklist filter. To volunteer and get additional information, contact Marshall Iliff (mji26@cornell.edu). Even if you are not an expert, a basic initial checklist would be really helpful to create a starting point, they can always be refined later.

Thanks!

Team eBird,

Marshall, Chris, and Brian

PS - This Global expansion will finally bring counties in for Canada -- something that has been on our wish list for a long time!

eBird Site Survey at Monkey Run

2010-03-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

For the past few months I have been taking part in the eBird Site Survey. The idea behind the survey is to repeatedly count birds from the same location in the same way. Whether you do this every day or every week, the concept is to simply try to go birding the same way from one location and enter your sightings into eBird. You can do this from your backyard, a local patch, really anywhere you want. Before I moved, I did this at a local place called Myers Point--locally good for shorebirds, ducks and other goodies.

I've been doing the site survey about 5 out of 7 days each week this year. I count birds for 30 minutes from our backyard at Monkey Run 15 minutes after sunrise. Of course, I also enter other checklists from here at other times of day but I try to make sure to do this each day. I know that I have seen A LOT more birds because I want to get up each day and really keep track of what's there. This morning I saw my 67th species for the year from our yard (a Tree Swallow), had our first singing Purple Finch and a lot of other small discoveries that help make birding so enjoyable.

The dynamics of migration quickly become evident as you spent time watching and recording what you see. You begin to understand when the local birds breed, when the intensity of their singing peaks, and when they quiet down to be inconspicuous around a nest with young. But perhaps the best thing about entering these into eBird is that we can begin to understand bird populations with this granularity across a vast spatial scale. Imagine not just your backyard or local patch, but thousands of backyards and birding sites sewn together across the landscape providing a real-time snapshot of living bird communities--all available to scientists with the click of a button. This is the concept of the eBird Site Survey.

If you haven't used eBird in a while, or even if you use it all the time, I encourage you to give the site survey a try. Even if you are only standing in your yard and recording birds for five minutes a day, I think you'll be surprised at what you see, how much you learn, and how much fun you have. The site survey is a great way to start using eBird too. You don't need to be an expert. This is something all of us can do. If you have any questions, let me know and I'll be happy to try to help.

Below is a link to more information on the site survey:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about/eBird_Site_Survey

Here is my checklist from this morning--direct from eBird.

Location: 31 Monkey Run Road
Observation date: 3/30/10
Notes: WEATHER: Overcast. 34F. North wind 7 - 12 mph.
Number of species: 27

Canada Goose 2
Hooded Merganser 2 A pair flying close together low over trees to the south.
Herring Gull (American) 1
Mourning Dove 3
Red-bellied Woodpecker 2
Downy Woodpecker 1
Hairy Woodpecker 1
Blue Jay 13 Up to 13 sitting up in the top of the conifers together at one time--it seemed as if there was one main group of 8 birds, a pair, and another group of 3.
American Crow 7
Tree Swallow 1 **NEW YARD BIRD. Single flyover fairly low over treetops. 67th species for the year.
Black-capped Chickadee 8
Tufted Titmouse 2
Red-breasted Nuthatch 4
White-breasted Nuthatch 3
Carolina Wren 2 Two singing.
American Robin 25 About 20 flyovers and 5 in trees or on ground.
European Starling 2
Cedar Waxwing 24 Perched along little creek to SE.
Fox Sparrow (Red) 2 One under feeders; the other singing.
Song Sparrow 6
White-throated Sparrow 1
Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored) 10
Northern Cardinal 4
Common Grackle 1 Flyover
Brown-headed Cowbird 1 Flyover.
Purple Finch 1 One singing persistently to the south for about 10 minutes. I've had a couple flyovers this year, but this was the first Purple Finch that I've heard singing.
American Goldfinch 1 Flyover.

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

Science Pipes Contest

2010-03-18T14:31:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned on the eBird Tech Talk forum that we are continuing to open up the ability for people to interact with the eBird database. As some of our most passionate users, we are making a announcement of an eBird Science Pipes contest first at Chip Notes and in eBird Tech Talk. We invite you to participate in the first ever Science Pipes eBird contest. We've conjured up this contest as a way to introduce the eBird community to Science Pipes. "What's Science Pipes" you ask? It's a way for you to play with and visualize eBird data by creating a "pipe" that defines the visualization. Look for an official an announcement on eBird sometime next week, but in the meantime, find out more on the Science Pipes web page.

http://info.sciencepipes.org/help/2010/03/spring-ebird-contest.html

Feedback on 'State Needs Alerts'

2010-02-24T15:22:00.000-08:00

eBirders

Yesterday we launched the next wave of eBird alerts--the State Needs Alerts. The goal of these alerts is to send you notification on birds being reported in a given state, that you have not yet personally reported to eBird--essentially comparing your lists with all the new reports being submitted on a daily basis. See news item here: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/state_needs_alert.

We'll be moving on to a county alert with similar functionality next, and would love to get your feedback on these state alerts before going forward. One of the big things, at least in California and a few other states with a lot of introduced species, is the fact that if I (or you) don't report the introduced exotics, they'll show up on your needs alert. So because I haven't reported all the parrots from LA County, those always show up on my alerts. Kind of annoying, but I can get around it. The alerts did drive me to finally go out and see the nearby Tufted Duck!

Brian and Team eBird

The grand plan for 'eBird Alerts'

2010-01-26T16:04:00.000-08:00

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

Contest for free BirdsEye iPhone apps

2010-01-20T14:31:00.000-08:00

Just in case you hadn't seen it, the eBird homepage is now featuring news of a contest we are running next week (24-31 Jan) which will award as a prize 20 versions of BirdsEye (the cool new app that draws on eBird data). All of us at Team eBird are big fans of this new application, which puts much of the best bird-finding info from eBird in the hands of the BirdsEye user. With a commitment to data entry coming down the pike too, we are hopeful that BirdsEye will become an even more useful tool for eBirders in the future.

The full story on the eBird homepage gives details of the contest (basically, the 20 eBirders submitting the most checklists over that time frame will win free versions of the app). The story also provides a summary of the app and what it does, as well as our Team eBird review.

If you have an iPhone though, you might as well register! The app sells for $20, and we don't yet know what kind of totals would be required to win!

If you don;t yet have BirdsEye, we highly recommend it. If you already own BirdsEye, we'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Better yet, comment on it in the App Store.

eBird switches to a new database server

2010-01-13T19:19:00.000-08:00

eBirders

For the past several months we've been preparing to migrate the massive eBird database and all the front-end functionality over to a newer, more powerful server. Thanks to the work of all our IS staff, that migration was completed yesterday, and all went smoothly. eBird users woke up on Tuesday morning with lightning-fast response times on most of the eBird output tools, and the My eBird pages.

Sometimes we have to spend time working on the back-end of eBird and prioritize that over creating new and exciting functionality for the front-end users. Now that we have eBird back on a solid database platform, we can proceed forward with much of the development we've been putting off for some time. We hope to focus over the next several months on making world-wide data entry a reality for eBird users, as well as unveiling a few neat tools we have up our sleeves.

Thanks for continued support of the project,

Team eBird

Brian, Marshall and Chris

Parsing help

2009-10-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

Our eBird bloggers include some of our most active, committed, and tech-savvy eBirders. It is this last element that we'd like to draw upon in this post, since it is really a call for help.

We periodically receive communications from birders who have years (even decades) of their bird notes in text form. Often in MS Word, or a similar format, these notes tend to be formatted in very regular ways which makes it possible to write some smart scripts to parse the information into a CSV or Excel file for eBird upload.

Unfortunately, the three eBird Project Leaders are pretty good with bird ID, but at the moment, none of us has the expertise to quickly and easily convert long text files into a CSV or Excel-compatible file that we can use via the eBird upload tool. An our eBird developers are busy developing RSS feeds and improving eBird queries and building other new cool stuff for the site itself, so we can't really draw on them.

We are wondering if there is anyone out there in the eBird Blogosphere that would have the expertise and willingness to assist us with converting text to CSV. Email Marshall directly at mji26@cornell.edu if you think you can help or have ideas (or if you have bird records in this format that you'd like to convert). Thanks!

Revealing personal locations--how do you feel about it?

2009-09-29T18:02:00.000-07:00

eBirders

Over the past two years we've been developing tools that showcase our users, and in so doing we've made more and more of the eBird data easily accessible to the public. One of the things we've struggled with is whether or not to show people's personal locations on a map. If you look at the eBird "High Counts" output tool, you'll see a mix of locations listed there. The "hotspots" are linked to a Google Map, whereas people's personal locations have no map link. We thought this would be fine, but it turns out that we're getting a lot of complaints about it.

If you look at "High Counts" for a region and see one that interests you, don't you want to know where the high count occurred? The problem is that for personal locations we do not enforce any kind of naming standards, so there's lots of places like "My backyard" or "Jim's Place". The problem with this is that when there is a record of interest to the public, they can't make sense of that location name, nor can they click on a link to find out more about where it actually is.

On our Google Rare Bird Gadget we display all locations on maps, personal and shared. We have had few complaints about this. I'm wondering how you all feel about creating links to personal locations in all the eBird output tools so that people can learn more about your data? We will still have the "hide this" option to hide checklists so users with sensitive data can keep their information private if they wish. We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments and concerns.

Thanks

Brian Sullivan
Team eBird

eBird taxonomic revision

2009-09-23T11:17:00.000-07:00

eBirders,

Has there ever been anything that you have wanted to enter in eBird but have been unable to? Something like "eider sp." or "booby sp.", a rare hybrid that you saw (like Glaucous x Great Black-backed Gull) or a subspecies group like "Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon)" (we already have that one).

The reason we ask is that we are revising our taxonomy now. We plan to expand the list of birds you can enter significantly, and have a list of recommendations from other eBirders which we will incorporate. If you have any birds you'd like to see in eBird, send any ideas like this to Marshall (mji26@cornell.edu).

NOTE: Before you send recommendations, please check to make sure we don;t already have the bird you are recommending. There are two ways to do this:

1) Download the eBird taxonomy and search for it here: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about/ebird-taxonomy/eBird-taxonomy-1-049_28-Apr-2009.xls

2) Edit or submit a checklist, click "rare species" and type part of the bird name in the "Add a species" box. If you want to add a "sp.", just type "sp." and if you want to add a hybrid, just type hybrid, since you will get a list with all options containing that character string. Please remember, that we use a slash "/" for species pairs--thus, we use Short-billed/Long-billed Dowitcher rather than dowitcher sp. and Greater/Lesser Yellowlegs rather than yellowlegs sp.

Thanks!

-Marshall Iliff for Team eBird

Take the eBird Survey

2009-08-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

eBirders

We've just put up a participant survey on the eBird site. The goal of the survey is to try to figure out a few things: 1. we have many choices ahead of us in terms of eBird development, what do our users think might be the best direction in terms of improving overall usage?; and 2. we suspect that the data entry process has deterred some potential eBird users. How can we improve this so that it becomes more streamlined, and more user-friendly?

Please take a minute and take the survey, and let us know what you think.

Thanks

Brian and the rest of Team eBird

eBird Online Presentations

2009-07-15T09:47:00.001-07:00

eBirders

We're about to test out the ability to give online eBird presentations through a tool called Yugma. It will allow individuals to see our desktop and interact with us via an online forum, and essentially get all the benefits of a hands-on eBird presentation with the travel, expense, and environmental costs of jetting all over the continent. Let us know what you think of this idea, and if you want to attend the first presentation. Email me to confirm at bls42@cornell.edu.

Check out this post from the home page:

We love to give eBird presentations in person, but the next best thing might be doing it via an online tool that allows a group of people to attend an eBird talk. We can accomplish this in two ways: the first is to schedule a specific eBird presentation for a local group, which you can arrange by contacting us at (ebird@cornell.edu). The second is to have bi-monthly eBird online eBird presentations that are open to anyone wishing to learn more about eBird. These will generally be an hour long, and occur in the evening. They will require an internet connection so that users can be connected to each other, and be able to see our presentations on their desktops. We are currently trying to guage interest in this kind of bi-monthly event, so we're in a testing phase. The first presentation will be a general eBird overview given at 7 PM Eastern time on Wednesday, July 22nd. Attendance is limited to 20 people/talk, so please send us an email to register (bls42@cornell.edu) and receive instructions. These are free!

Help spread the word - eBird promo materials available

2009-07-02T14:41:00.000-07:00

eBirders

We've just posted some promotional materials on the eBird site at this URL: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about/ebird-promotional-material. The first powerpoint is a general eBird overview that talks about the concept of the project, shows the data entry process and a bit about data output. The second powerpoint is an overview of how to be a better eBirder, which incorporates many of the topics that we've posted about on the home page as well as in this forum.

The idea is for faithful eBird users to take these powerpoints and present them at local bird clubs, look at them with friends etc. We wanted to make these materials available so people wishing to promote eBird would have a good starting point to do so. Take a look and let us know what you think, and if you dare, try giving an eBird talk in your home range!

If you do let us know so we can keep track.

Thanks

Brian, Chris and Marshall

eBird - Under the hood

2009-06-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

eBirders

This summer we're working on performance issues at eBird. Some birders who have lots of checklists are seeing really slow load times for things like the My eBird page, and we need to make sure that as eBird grows we can scale our tools up to meet user needs. What this means is that most of our development time will be spent on improvements that might not be obvious at first, but that should reap rewards for all users in the long run. We expect this to take a few more months.

We do have a few exciting developments that are about to be launched. The most important of which is a series of eBird APIs that feed data out to outside developers that want to make tools that use eBird data. These could include iPhone apps, Facebook apps etc. These should be launched in the coming weeks, and we're really excited about it.

We hope that you'll be patient as we go through this back-end development phase, but we do look forward to pushing out new and better tools for birders on the other side of this period.

Thanks

Brian, Chris and Marshall (and Tim who is sequestered in his cube)

Check out eBird's most wanted counties...

2009-06-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

eBirders

We're in the process of developing ways to try to inspire people to get out to different parts of the country and collect eBird data. Birders are often creatures of habit, which is a good thing, but it's also important for us to gather a wider spread of geographic data for analysis. We've beat around a few ideas, one of them called gBirding (more on that later), but we've also thought of trying to engage birders by showing them where the counties are with zero or one eBird checklist. Because the Top 100 tool works for counties, it's pretty easy to go out and become number 1 in a heartbeat. In any case, thoughts on how to engage people to get out to different parts of their own counties, or states, would be welcome. What would drive you to go birding somewhere that didn't necessarily have great birds (but might!)?

Brian

Migrants in June--Yes June!

2009-06-14T15:30:00.001-07:00

I think a lot of birders tend to think of June and July as the quiet season for migrants. These are certainly the lowest months for participation in eBird (in terms of the number of checklists submitted). Brian, Marshall and I have long wondered, what's the reason for this drop-off. Yeah, we know that it can be hot, humid, and buggy--and anyone who could see me now would know it's also allergy season. But, it's also an incredibly good time for birding. Most of us know that it's a great time to find nesting birds, but these months are under-appreciated in terms of finding migrants.

With that in mind, I decided to check some of the landbird locations around Braddock Bay, New York this morning. Firehouse Woods can be a spectacular location for birds in migration. Nestled between Lake Ontario, several smaller lakes and a bit of suburban sprawl from Rochester, the small woods here are a haven for migrants. If you come in here from mid-April to mid-May the woods are teeming with birds and birders. But by late May, there is almost no one birding. And in June? No one at all--the eBird bar charts are almost empty for the summer months!

With that in mind, I've decided to spend some time checking local migrant traps (both landbirds and shorebirds) from mid-June to mid-August to see what birds may be passing through that we don't notice. It would be great if others gave it a try--I think we'll all be surprised by how much is going on.

I'm already off to a great start with a NORTHERN PARULA today--a bird that was last reported to eBird from here on 17 May (and certainly doesn't breed near here). Where was it headed?

My complete eBird list is below.

Good eBirding,
Chris Wood, Ithaca New York (currently near Braddock Bay, New York)

Location: Firehouse, Long Pond Rd (Monroe Co., New York)
Observation date: 6/14/09
Notes: I checked both sides of the woods going as far as the loop in the trail on the south side.
Number of species: 32
Great Blue Heron 1
Mourning Dove 2
Downy Woodpecker 4
Eastern Wood-Pewee 2
Willow Flycatcher 2
Eastern Kingbird 1
Warbling Vireo 7
Blue Jay 3
American Crow 1
Northern Rough-winged Swallow 3
Barn Swallow 1
Black-capped Chickadee 7
House Wren 3
Marsh Wren 2
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 1
American Robin 10
Gray Catbird 7
Cedar Waxwing 2
Northern Parula 1 **RARE at this season. I'm not sure what direction this bird was headed. A single bird came in silently to my pishing--it appeared to be an adult male with a bold complete breast band and brightly colored throat and upper breast. No sign of molt. I only saw him for about 15 second before he disappeared.
Yellow Warbler 18
American Redstart 2 Two singing males--the one that I saw was a first year male with one black feather on the breast, dark lores, a couple black feathers on/near the malar and a bit more orange color to sides of breast.
Common Yellowthroat 2
Chipping Sparrow 1
Song Sparrow 4
Swamp Sparrow 5
Northern Cardinal 4
Red-winged Blackbird 12
Common Grackle 2
Brown-headed Cowbird 4
Baltimore Oriole 5 As with most birds that I have seen around here, all individuals (including two females) had a lot of red in the plumage--males on breast, females on sides of breast, sides of the uppertail coverts (tract, not individual feathers).
American Goldfinch 8
House Sparrow 2

Should this blog be an open forum?

2009-06-08T16:52:00.000-07:00

eBirders

Concerning Dany's recent post that the eBird Blog is boring, well, the other option here is to open this up to the eBird community for posting messages, asking questions etc. of each other. We don't have a problem with that, but we also don't want this to turn into a discussion about how to ID birds, travel tips, etc, that are found elsewhere.

We really wanted to keep this related to eBird as much as possible, but I agree that this could quickly get stale if all we do is ask for help and then tell you "Oh yeah, we already thought of that--it's on the list". The reality is that we HAVE thought of lots of things to develop, but time, money, personnel and having to prioritize limit what we can get done quickly.

In any case, I put the question to the crowd: should this be a public blog for eBird users to post stories, insights, bird info etc?

Brian

3 June 2009 - eBird questions, comments and suggestions

2009-06-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

eBirders

It's great to see so many comments and interest in eBird. I'll try to keep the blog fresh with periodic posts like this so people can pose questions (about eBird only please!), comments and provide suggestions for improvements. It is our hope that you, the eBird users, will help others by responding to questions as well. We will, of course be monitoring and chiming in when we can. For technical eBird issues, there is a Google Group called "eBird Tech Talk" run by Charles Swift. That is a great forum for trouble-shooting eBird techincal problems.

Thanks

Team eBird

Are you reporting all the species you saw/heard? What the heck do we mean???

2009-05-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

eBirders

Hyla raises a very important issue in stating that new eBirders might not fully understand this very important question asked at the top of every eBird checklist. The question as currently stated reads "Are you submitting a complete checklist of the birds you saw/heard?". By clicking an additional drop down menu immediately below called "What does this mean?" users see the following text:

"We want to find out whether you are reporting all the birds you were able to identify to the best of your ability. In other words, answer "Yes" to this question when you submit more than just the highlights of your birding event, and try to note every species present. We realize that all birds are not identifiable and user abilities vary. You should always answer "Yes" to this question unless you are purposefully excluding some species (e.g. European Starlings) from your checklist. You do not need to count all the individuals to answer "Yes" to this question. Please try to report all species."

I can tell you that we've struggled with the wording of this question at eBird since day one. We thought by adding the expanded clarification above the matter would be settled. But it sounds like it's still not fully clarified.

So, help us out, respond to this post with suggestions on how to word this better! Read more about this concept and why it is absolutely critical that every eBirder understand why they should be reporting all species here.

Thanks

Team eBird

Want to help with eBird hotspots???

2009-05-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

eBirders

There have been quite a few questions lately about 'eBird hotspots', most wondering why their hotspot suggestion hasn't yet been approved. Hotspots are an ongoing issue at eBird, mostly because the system we have in place is suffering from success! The concept is a great one, and we've got lots of hotspots in the database now, just over 30,000. The concept was pioneering at the time, 2002, to let eBirders create hotspots. Where we have a problem is actually finding the time to go in and approve all the hotspot suggestions. That job falls to Chris, Marshall and me, and despite trying to keep up with it we have fallen behind. Right now there are about 5,000 pending! The only reason we don't approve a hotspot request is if it already exists (a common problem) or if the place is a personal location like someone's backyard. In any case, there are many requests languishing, and that means that we have to change the process.

In some states people have stepped up to become hotspot editors, and we'd like to pursue this model nationwide and countrywide throughout the rest of the Western Hemisphere. These individuals essentially manage all the hotspot requests for the state (or country) and have the power to merge, move and rename existing hotspots. In places like California, Texas, and North Carolina we have people actively managing hotspots and the process goes smoothly. We need help elsewhere though! So, if anyone out there wants to help manage hotspots for their state, please get in touch with us. After an initial bit of work, it probably would take about 10 minutes per week/state.

Let us know if you'd like to help and we can give you the tools!

Comments on your comments!

2009-05-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

eBirders

Thanks again for providing valuable insight into how you use eBird, what you like about it and what you think needs to be developed. The responses show that we have a broad range of users, from beginners to experts, and each user seems to use eBird a little bit differently. Below I'll try to address some of the questions that arose.

To Dave Rach: Active promotion is what we're hoping to achieve. We want eBird to go 'viral', that is we want all of our users to actively promote it to their birding friends and family. Ideally each eBirder would be a vocal advocate for the project on listserves and anywhere else they could find a forum.

To Claire: I actually think that it's great that you're one of the biggest contributors. This shows that you don't need to be a famous globe-trotting expert to make a huge contribution to eBird. Your data are as valuable, or arguably even more valuable because of your understanding of eBird, your repeated observations and your inclusion of effort information. This is the epitomy of what we want in an eBirder!

To John: Hotspots are sometimes an issue in eBird. eBird thrives off data, and when a new hotspot is created it is certainly data poor. Over time the bar charts etc become fleshed out with more data. It just takes a while, especially if you're one of few people contributing to the hotspot.

To Kathiesbirds: The fact that you've moved from GBBC to eBird and now count all of the birds you see all the time is incredible. That's the model that we hope many GBBC participants will follow. In terms of convincing your friends who are using other birding software, well, that's a big issue. Many birders do use other software to keep their lists, and we're aware of that. We are trying to develop ways to easily migrate those data into eBird. See this URL for a section that shows the differnt programs (e.g., AviSys) that have written code to bring data into eBird (http://ebird.org/content/ebird/home/birding-news-and-features/about/ebird-news-index). The real issue here is that eBird collects data in a way that is useful to science. By contributing complete checklists of birds from discrete locations with associated effort information, you are adding value to your observations and allowing them to be used in scientific analysis. Observations of single birds in space and time, as many of these software packages record them, and less useful becuase they lack the specifics that are needed for analysis. That's the critically important thing about the way eBird works. We're always walking the line between trying to let birders do what they do in an enjoyable way, but at the same time steering them in the direction of making their data more useful.

To Corey: We do have plans to make eBird available worldwide. We hope to do this in the near future and it is one of our major goals. The problem is that its not as simple as just turning it on. There are many things that work behind the scenes to make eBird what it is, including regional editors who review data, automated filters that create checklists and flag potentially erroneous data, hotspot editors etc. It is a major job to just get all this working in the USA! Right now we plan to launch the rest of the world in beta, which means it'll be less than smooth for a while, but will consistently improve with time and subsequent iterations.

To Paul Hurtado: We're actually working on a concept right now to do just that! We are going to introduce a map that shows where the data are concentrated and where we need data. We're actively working with analysts right now to create that.

To Sean: We are currently working on our first series of APIs and data feeds that will stream data out of eBird. These should be launched within the next several months. What we need to do next is to ask you, and the rest of our users, exactly what kinds of feeds you'd like to see if you were going to display eBird information elsewhere (e.g. Facebook).

To Michael: There are lots of good ideas here. The big one that I see is the realization that we might need to take more 'starter' data to get people involved, and then push them in the right direction with their new observations. Right now you need species, date and location for a record in eBird. We've toyed with the idea of creating an 'initial life list' option where users could just go in and set up their lists without the associated data, and then move forward from that point. What has stopped that is our desire to keep the database solid, and free of information that can't be used by science. What we're realizing is that we might have to change that policy to get people 'over the hump' and into eBird. Once they are in eBird, we've found that they really do begin to understand the importance of contributing effort-based observations. Not all will, but it certainly might help.

The blog would be a great forum for people to help others upload data. We'll do a post on that in the near future. There are some new tools that make this even easier. Check out the eBird Express here (http://www.ocellated.com/tag/ebird-express/).

To Sean: We are in the process of trying to 'take the lid off' eBird, open it up in ways that it hasn't been seen before. Part of that will be allowing users to expose their data to the public or to just 'friends'. Right now only you can see your individual checklists, but in the next iteration of eBird we want YOU to decide who can see your data. I know that I'd like to see what some folks are reporting. In addition we need to begin to uncover the review process, make our data editors visible and accessible to the public and generally pull back the curtain on some of things that happen behind the scenes. More transparency will make users more comfortable with the whole process.

To Oriole: Agreed, birding has to be fun first, after all, that's why most of us do it! We just need to find the right mix of fun and science at eBird.

To Derek Bakken: eBird does allow the option of entering data at the county and even state level. The reason that we try to steer people away from that and toward more location-based checklists is that the latter are so much better for analysis. The former are find for listing, but it all comes back to adding value to your data. If you're out there collecting data, why not go the extra mile to make it useful. It's actually more rewarding in the end even for listing purposes because then you can view location-based lists, not just county etc.

To Brendan: We are definitely focused now on trying to build community around eBird. We don't want to build a "Facebook for birders" but we do want to interface more fully with these types of social networking sites. I'll turn it back to you: what kinds of eBird information would you want to display on your Facebook page?

To Jennifer Wenzel: If you open a checklist using the "Manage my observations" tool you can see under "Date and Effort" info on each individual checklist whom you've shared it with.

To Clay: Do all you can to get others into it!

To Anonymous: RE your observations being in the wrong order, email me separately with more details and we'll look into it (bls42@cornell.edu)

To Dave Rach: We can open this forum up so that users (members) can post topics. What we don't want is for the discussion to turn from eBird to "what bird is this?" etc. There are other forums for that kind of birding info.

To Joe: Hah! I also birded Costa Rica on my honeymoon and submitted a ton of checklists. I used an Excel spreadsheet to collect the data while I was there and then bulk uploaded it when I got back. We need to do a feature on how to do this on the eBird home page. Look for it soon.

To Lindsey: Another nod to the social networking side of things. We need to do this better.

To Gallus: eBird allows you to enter all field identifiable subspecies in North America. They might not be on some checklists, it depends where you are birding, but you can always add subspecies data using the "Add a species" option on the checklist page. See the eBird taxonomy (http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about/ebird-taxonomy) for all that we have to offer. We are now working closely with Clements so that it and the eBird taxonomy will become one and the same.

To Evan: Location-based data are better for analysis and for listing purposes. It sounds like what we need to do is to design a quick way to create 'day reports' that will tally all the birds you've seen in a day.

The 'timeout' on a checklist submission should be 60 minutes. eBird restarts the clock each time you interact with it so if you click the 'rare species' link in blue at the top of the page, and then revert back to 'most probable' you'll be back where you were with 60 fresh minutes to continue.

To Riasp57: It's great that you've moved over from GBBC to eBird. If you want to talk specifically about what birds your seeing and that type of information, you can check out the listserve called BirdChat here (http://listserv.arizona.edu/archives/birdchat.html)

To Jay McGann: Duplication of effort is definitely something that we struggle with. That's why we're trying to make it easier to import data from other software to eBird.

To Finatic: Yes, eBird Buddies would be able to see your checklists etc. and look at your data. Maybe even comment on birds that they like or dislike.

To Anonymous RE Weather: You can put weather info in the checklist comments to describe local conditions. We gather weather info for analysis from automated sensor networks so adding that into eBird would be somewhat redundant - at least from an analysis perspective.

RE "Here Comes Everybody". We realize that in most community-based sites that a relative few contribute the majority of the data. Even still, the numbers at eBird are on the low side. What we hope to learn is why 90% of users don't contribute data, and then possibly make some changes to welcome that group into the fold. There will always be more users than contributors, however, we are hoping to improve the ratio.

To Linda Price: Yes, agreed, we definitely need to feature the utility of finding your own place to monitor. While many birders do visit the hotspots, finding and owning your 'local patch' as the Brits call it, has tremendous benefits.

I really like your idea of the 'eBird help night' at local bird clubs.

To Jay McGann: We are attempting to do precisely what you say, which is to bring all bird data under one umbrella (including eBird) at the Avian Knowledge Network. Check it out here (www.avianknowledge.net)

To James Fox: We need to step up our hotspot process in general. There's a lot of potential here for more useful information and ways to organize bird information.

Do you eBird? - Open Thread

2009-05-23T17:40:00.000-07:00

Based on recent research we've learned that roughly 70,000 people use eBird more than 50 times a year to gather information on birds. Most surprising to us was the fact that just 10,000 people entered data into eBird at least once, and even more remarkable is that just 2500 people entered more than 50 eBird checklists last year. What this tells us is that there is a large community of people out there using eBird as an information source, but a relative few actually contribute data. We want to better understand what drives our users, and ultimately participation in eBird. Why people submit data, why they don't, what's good and bad about eBird? Helping us answer these questions will make eBird a better tool for birders, and ultimately put more data into the hands of scientists and conservationists. With that, we ask you, the eBird community how we can be better...