Hi John and others, This is an excellent, albeit complicated question. I'm sorry for the length of this reply, but we hope for this process to be as transparent as possible so there is probably more here than anyone wanted on this topic. The information below comes from the documentation we send to our regional editors. This is a fairly long (30 page) document, and you are right to highlight the inconsistencies in our treatment of these species in eBird right now. I'll work with our editors in New York to fix this and turn to NYSARC for some guidance and discussion on what species will be useful to show. In the meantime, here is the process that we outline for our regional editors. Some of the terminology requires a bit of explanation, so I'll start with that.
Valid and Invalid are terms that we use to indicate if a record appears in public output (bar charts, high counts, early and late dates etc). It does NOT simply mean whether a bird is correctly identified or not. There are several cases where a species may well be correctly identified, but may be excluded from eBird output for other reasons (for instance, a traveling count of 500 miles; if someone accidentally submitted the exact same checklist twice; some escapes that do not yet appear to be part of any trend). It is also worth remembering that any bird you enter will count for your own personal lists -- if you say you saw a 100 Golden Eagles in Central Park that will who up on your lists -- but do not expect it to show up in public output We have reasons why a record is valid (public) or invalid (hidden). For instance: photographed (valid or invalid), species misidentified (not valid), not accepted by state records committee (not valid), accepted by records committee (valid). In some cases, including exotic species, these are used used for validating (showing on public displays) and invalidating (hiding from public output). Below is more detail on exotics directly from our documentation to reviewers. EXOTIC SPECIES We believe that it is important and useful for birders to report exotic birds. eBird provides an extraordinary illustration of the spread of Eurasian Collared-Dove across the country, and we believe it could be a valuable tool for understanding how other exotics expand or contract their ranges. For example, Tricolored Munia is expanding in the Caribbean and Central America and may soon reach the United States, Nutmeg Mannikin is breeding in the wild and expanding in southern California, Peach-faced Lovebird populations are on the rise in southern Arizona, and Monk Parakeet populations are in constant flux in many cities. However, a much thornier issue is how to treat records of other escapee species within the eBird review process. We lay out some guidelines below: 1) Be sure to review the identification of exotic species first; if the identification is not acceptable, there is no need to consider the exotic/introduced status! 2) Any exotic population accepted to the state or regional list should be reviewed and validated within eBird just as you would for a native species. 3) For the following species, which are showing expanding populations, we recommend that all records be reviewed and validated as for native species within the specified region: ● Trumpeter Swan--Anywhere it occurs, including recent reintroductions ● Mute Swan--Within the Northeast, Great Lakes, and Upper Midwest ● Monk Parakeet--Anywhere free-flying birds occur ● Peach-faced Lovebird (and other lovebirds)--in southern Arizona ● Eurasian Tree Sparrow--Anywhere free-flying birds occur 4) For all other examples, including escapee waterfowl, parrots, and songbirds, as well as submissions of all "Domestic type" species (Graylag Goose, Muscovy Duck, and Mallard), should be treated as "invalid" with the reason "Species-Introduced/Exotic". For example, a Red-lored Parrot in St. Louis, while interesting, should not be validated within the eBird Review Tools. If an expanding exotic species warrants tracking with eBird, please do search for those records, and validate them. And please do encourage reporting of exotics in your region; if and when those populations show signs of increase (or are accepted to the state list) it will be easy to search for them all and change their validation status. 5) In certain "exotic bird regions", we recommend treating a larger slate of species. What species are tracked using eBird should be at the discretion of the reviewers in those areas. Please be aware that this will mean that state bar charts and maps show large number of exotic species, but this is, in fact, an accurate representation of the avifauna. But we strongly feel that tracking these species using eBird will be really valuable to our understanding of the distribution and occurrence patterns for these species. Please note also: you should encourage birders in your area to report exotic species on all outings, and in those areas they should consider the question "Are you reporting all species" to include both native and non-native species. The editors in each of these regions maintain a list of exotic species that will be tracked with eBird and they show up on the expected species lists. ● Hawaii ● south Florida ● southern California ● south Texas 6) There are a few species which have been inconsistently treated by records committees as possible escapees, with some committees treating all occurrences as wild, and others treating all occurrences as escapees. For example, as of 2008, Barnacle Goose was treated as wild in Pennsylvania, but as an escapee in adjacent Maryland. Although we support the decisions of Records Committees as outlined above, the inconsistent treatment of species such as Barnacle Goose actually obscures the very patterns of occurrence that can be useful for records committees to assess the wild status of these species. The United States Barnacle Goose bar chart shows a pattern very similar to that of other migratory geese, and mirrors that of Greenland Greater White-fronted Geese. Only by validating ALL records will patterns begin to be apparent in these species through eBird tools. Thus, for species with "mixed" treatment by various state records committees, we recommend erring on the liberal side (i.e., it may be appropriate to depart from the records committee for these records). In cases where the bird is known to have escaped from captivity, or where there is strong circumstantial evidence that the individual was an escapee (unusual behavior, unusual plumage/molt, etc.) we recommend that the record be invalidated with the reason "Species-Introduced/Exotic". However, in all other cases regardless of location or time of year, we recommend that these species be treated as valid: Barnacle Goose, Pink-footed Goose, White-cheeked Pintail, Garganey, Baikal Teal, Falcated Duck, Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, American Flamingo, Crested Caracara, Harris's Hawk, Monk Parakeet. If you believe it is an escapee, but have no strong evidence to support your position, this is the one case where you should use the code "Valid" and "Species-Introduced/Exotic". Please be sure to include some written comments explaining your treatment of the record. Best, Chris On Oct 22, 2012, at 6:03 PM, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: The topic of the Hooded Crow reminded me of something I had noted last winter and never addressed. I couldn't help but notice that all mention of the Hooded Crow has been deleted from the New York and New Jersey Checklists on e-bird. When you bring up the bar charts, Hooded Crow is not there. Is there some other location that these records are logged? It seems odd to me that they would have been deleted. Whether or not a bird is accepted by the state committees seems irrelevant to its presence on the list. Certainly species like Red Jungle-fowl and Budgerigar (New Jersey) and Swan Goose and Mitred Parakeet (New York) remain on the e-bird state checklists. By the way, the Hooded Crow continues on "my e-bird" list, just not the state lists. Perhaps there is information I don't have about how these issues are handled. At any rate I would appreciate it if someone who knows the answer could fill us in on this topic. Thanks, John Haas Wurtsboro, New York -- NYSbirds-L List Info: Welcome and Basics Rules and Information Subscribe, Configuration and Leave Archives: The Mail Archive Surfbirds BirdingOnThe.Net Please submit your observations to eBird! -- Chris Wood eBird & Neotropical Birds Project Leader Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York http://ebird.org http://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
