Greetings, I thought it might be appropriate for me to respond to help clarify some things about eBird since I'm privileged to colead the project with Brian Sullivan (based in California) and Marshall Iliff (based in Massachusetts).
I want to be very clear. eBird is not perfect. And as hard as we try and as many people we engage as users, as reviewers, and as people to use data, it never will be perfect. There will be mistakes. There will be errors. So if you are looking for something that's perfect and has no need for improvement, eBird isn't for you. But, if you want to share your sightings in a way that they can be used for research, for education and for conservation we hope that you'll consider using eBird. Andrew commented on ways the data have been used in scientific publications. They are also being used as management tool at National Wildlife Refuges to time drawdowns of water levels and examine how management actions influence birds. They were used during the Gulf oil spill to help identify the most critical beaches, islands and marshes. They are being used to identify Important Bird Areas. eBird data are being used actively, not just by the Cornell Lab and by Audubon but by a variety of researchers and conservationists throughout the Americas. GETTING DATA OUT eBird began as a joint collaboration between Audubon and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Now there are quite literally hundreds of partners and tens of thousands of participants in eBird. We take great responsibility in ensure that all data collected by eBird are available to EVERYONE. One challenge is that we now average between one and two MILLION records entered into eBird each month. So much of what we do is provide visualizations of the data. These include maps, bar charts and summaries of data. But we also understand that people want raw data, which are make available through the Avian Knowledge Network (link below). Whether you are someone from the Nature Conservancy looking to acquire lands, a land manager for USFWS trying to see what birds pass through your refuge or someone simply interested in better understanding birds, you have access to eBird. As part of Team eBird commitment to national journals like North American Birds and regional journals like the Kingbird, we also send out all records of birds entered into eBird for every reporting period. We also developed an API that allows programmers to write code to directly access eBird data to use with web sites or hand held devises (BirdsEye on the iPhone is one instance of this). DATA ACCURACY We are aware that birders do not all have equal ability to find and identify all species. We are building a strong and mutually beneficial relationship with NYSARC that continues to improve. We have spent considerable time and effort developing a network that now includes nearly 600 regional editors and nearly 1000 different regional filters. These filters started out at the state level and we now have many county level filters in place. Do we have more work to do? Certainly. But we do have a very strong system in place that will continue to improve thanks largely to the efforts of a dedicated reviewer network. Are a lot of records missing? Certainly! But, if you notice that something you have seen is missing from our reports it's easy to fix. Just enter it. And if you see problems let us know. We are always looking for help reviewing records. WHAT YOU CAN DO For those of you who haven't used it, or haven't in a while I'd ask for some of your time to come back and take a look. Go to eBird.org: http://ebird.org/content/ny Click on View and Explore data and look at bar charts for different states or counties. Then click on the name of one of the species within a bar chart to see a map of where they have been seen. Yellow markers are for sightings within the last 30 days. Play around and look at arrivals and departures. There are several features here that we think are very useful to the birding community. When I plan trips, I often go to the bar charts for a county that I'm visiting. They give me an excellent idea of what species I am likely to see. I find them far more useful than simple lists of birds because they give me an idea of what speciesI am most likely to see and when. Of course, we would love it if you would enter all the birds you saw every time you stop and go birding. But as a starting point, consider picking one location and keeping track of the birds you see there once a week and entering them into eBird. We believe that if you keep going back to the same place, take notes, and enter them into eBird, it will add to your appreciation and enjoyment of birding. Thanks for your consideration. Good eBirding, Chris Wood eBird & Neotropical Birds Project Leader Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York http://ebird.org http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu Senior Leader, WINGS Birding Tours http://wingsbirds.com -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html 3) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
