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Did you know that in 2011 more than 1000 birders submitted over 56,000 bird checklists in Ontario to eBird? That’s more than 150 checklists submitted per day! while this is very impressive, there are still hundreds of Ontario birders whose valuable observations are going undocumented in this secure, real-time living/interactive database and long term archive. Many of you may have already heard of or joined eBird (www.ebird.ca), but we suspect that many of you have not. We’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to eBird so that you might consider giving it a try. For those of you who have already tried it and decided it wasn’t for you, there have been significant upgrades in the past few years that are cause for giving it another chance. What is eBird? eBird “is a citizen science project that takes advantage of numerous information technologies to engage a global network of birders to report their observation to a centralized database. Anyone, anywhere, and at anytime can submit observations of birds via the Internet or through a variety of handheld devices. These amassed observations provide scientists, researchers, and amateur naturalists with data about bird distribution and abundance across varying spatio-temporal extents. All data are free and readily accessible to anyone through the Avian Knowledge Network (AKN)” (Wood et al. 2011). The AKN is an organization of 51 international government and non-government institutions whose goal is to understand the patterns and dynamics of bird populations across the Western Hemisphere. Currently the AKN holds over 112 million bird records. “eBird data have been used in a wide variety of applications, from highlighting the importance of public lands in conservation to studies on evolution, and to explore biogeography” (Wood et al. 2011, available here: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001220). For the birder in you, it is a free, real-time, interactive, online global checklist program. It was developed and maintained by the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and is supported around the world by local bird conservation organizations, such as Bird Studies Canada (BSC) which maintains the Canadian eBird Portal. How does it work? 1) Go Birding 2) Go online and enter your sightings into eBird 3) Let eBird do all the work and you can enjoy all the benefits. eBird works by gathering checklists from birders. Each checklist contains basic information such as the location, date and list of species observed. You can think of it like a global, year-round bird atlas. That information may seem trivial to many people but when it is combined with the observations of thousands of other birders it becomes a powerful tool. All of the data submitted is collected into a central, permanent archive of bird observations that is available to bird researchers and conservationists, land managers, and anyone else with an interest in birds. How is the data vetted? All observations go through a vetting process before entering the public database. The first step is to pass through a county-level filter. These filters specify a maximum value for each species, specific to the month and county in Ontario. If a submitted record exceeds this value, the user is asked to confirm the sighting and provide details. The record is then flagged for manual review by one of our expert regional eBird reviewers across Ontario. Any records on the Ontario Bird Records Committee review list are not permanently accepted into the database until they have been reviewed by the OBRC. Where a regional records committee exists the regional editors are defer to the local committee’s decisions. eBird also has the capability of adding photos to checklists so that users can often vet the data themselves. All records remain in a user’s personal account regardless of the decision of eBird editors. What’s in it for me? Some people think that using eBird requires too much of a time commitment. This is not true, as you can use eBird to the level that suits you. If you only want to keep track of your rare sightings or first sightings of the year that is perfectly fine. You can be as thorough as you like. By contributing data to eBird your data will appear in the public database and you can start uncovering interesting patterns about the birds in any region of the world, even your own backyard. There are many great features of eBird, but here are those which may be of particular interest to Ontbirds’ subscribers: -Automatic list keeping – Since every checklist you submit has a location and date, eBird keeps many different lists for you, automatically updating them in real-time with taxonomy updates and additions. These lists are available for any year or all time, and for individual locations, counties, provinces/states and countries. eBird now allows users to create customizable “patches” with a set of manually selected locations (for example “Hamilton Study Area”). -Checklist sharing- Most of us are often out birding with other people and eBird makes it easy for you to report that. One person in a group can be designated to submit the checklist(s) for a trip and then “share” that checklist with the others who were also there. That way the checklist will appear in everyone’s accounts, but they extra copies will be marked as duplicates for data analysis. Each person can make their own edits to the list to reflect what they actually saw (or missed). -Top100 – For the competitive birders out there you can track your progress to see the top 100 eBird users (by species or checklist) for any province/state or country, for any time period. Trust us that it is great incentive to get you off your butt and out the door more often! This is a great way to track the progress of certain people who may or may not be doing big years in Ontario this year. Check out the Top100 in your area and catch the action. See if you recognize anyone! (Note, you can change the location to be more specific, such as a county) http://ebird.org/ebird/canada/top100?locInfo.regionCode=CA-ON&year=2012&locInfo.regionType=subnational1 -eBird email alerts- This is an exciting new feature available. You can now sign up for email alerts. You can sign up for multiple alerts including “rare bird alerts”, “life needs alerts”, or “year needs alerts” for any country, province or county. For example, you can receive an update of all the ABA rarities observed in North America on a given day, or just the rarities observed in your home province or county. These alerts compliment Ontbirds perfectly, allowing you to customize what you want to keep tabs on and also helps to keep the chatter and updates. While Ontbirds still provides the best way to quickly spread the word with the information and details about Ontario’s rarest birds, eBird is by far the best way to keep track of them after their original observation. The weekly regional bird reports on Ontbirds can also easily gather bird sightings from eBird (Mark Conboy of the Kingston Field Naturalists has perfected this). -Powerful output- anyone can explore the eBird data in the form of maps and bar charts (think of a seasonal checklist). You can explore this data at whatever scale you want. This is especially helpful if you are planning on going to an area you aren’t familiar with. -Centralized place for bird records- if you’re wondering when to expect your first Red-winged Blackbirds or Yellow Warblers or just want to know where to find White-winged Scoters in the winter, eBird can help you answer many of your questions about birds. A few organizations have already uploaded their bird records databases to eBird, making this wealth of information available to anyone who is interested. Help put Ontario on the map (literally)! This year, eBird growth in Ontario is building on the trend seen in 2011, Ontario is well on its way to surpassing British Columbia as the top eBirding community in Canada. Ontario is currently ranked sixth out of all states and provinces for the number of checklists submitted to date in February, not too bad! You can help contribute to eBird’s success in Ontario while furthering our understanding of our exceptional bird life. How do I get started? All you have to do is visit www.ebird.ca and register with a username and password. Don’t worry; if you can handle email, the eBird basics aren’t any more difficult. You can check out the eBird quick start guide online: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about . Your best bet is to start slow, try just regularly entering a checklist from your house or favourite nearby birding spot once a week. Once you get the hang of it you can start going back and entering your older records if you have kept them. You should know that eBird allows users to bulk upload records that are in the form of an excel spreadsheet or that have been kept in many of the popular bird recording programs out there. If you have any problems or questions, including help with uploading old records, we’d be happy to give you a hand. Put your hard earned data to work for bird conservation science and the evolution of birding. Thanks for your time and interest, Mike Burrell ([email protected]) and Stuart Mackenzie ([email protected]) _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to [email protected] For information about ONTBIRDS visit http://www.ofo.ca/
