Grandview Cemetery in Fort Collins (Larimer) on 15March2017

[DAVID A LEATHERMAN]

Exciting day at Grandview Cemetery, west end of Mountain Avenue, Fort Collins.  eBird didn't like the Turkey Vulture that flew thru at treetop level, even though they always come back in March and there's been a colony a few blocks east of the cemetery for decades.  I would call the date about "a week early" from the norm.  I don't have access to the late Dr. Alex Cringan's data on their local return date.  In its infant wisdom eBird did NOT flag a bird I have never seen there in 1700+ visits: Marsh Wren.  That's species #198 for me at the cemetery.  It was in the alley east of the cemetery foraging at the base of a fence overgrown with Virginia creeper vines.  I got wonderful photos with a camera that told me afterwards ("no card").  Drat.  Saw a Cooper's hawk eating a collared-dove in the middle of the street.  Lots of adult hackberry gall-making psyllids out and about, freshly emerged from their overwintering haunts in the bark.  A brown creeper, no doubt not alone, was nitpicking them.  Barring a super cold, fast-ascending storm, when we return to sub-freezing temps again, these little insects will return to the bark.  If it were to stay warm they would mate and lay eggs on the developing buds of hackberry.  A bushtit and a couple black-capped chickadees were gleaning golden oak scales from a bur oak.  Bushtits were also getting aphids from a pinyon pine and marauding thru various other plants.  To paraphrase the Peace Corps slogan, mama great horned owl was carrying on at "the most boring job you'll ever love" (incubation).  Total of 17 species.

Dave Leatherman

Fort Collins

[Derek Hill]

eBird should probably not reject your Turkey Vulture sighting. I was standing in the yard in Fort Collins approximately 5:17pm on Thursday 9 March 2017 when a big dark teetering bird cruising at quite low altitude caught my eye. It was my FOS TV and I was a bit surprised to see this bird so early. I wasn't sure if it was early or 'on time,' as I'm used to seeing them year round back home.  I bet our birds, Dave, claimed the primo roost spots in FOCO. Early bird gets the worm(shaped roosting limb).

Don't forget to check battery level and presence of memory card before birding! I'm sure your MAWR photos would've been great. One day, maybe photos will instantly be lifted to cloud storage as they're taken.

Good birding and happy springtime,

Derek Hill
Fort Collins
king...@yahoo.com

[Nicholas Komar]

Regarding eBird flags, I will play Devils Advocate. Tripping the filter does not imply "rejection"  (Derek's word) or dislike (Dave's word) on the part of eBird. Flagged observations are almost certainly welcomed by the eBird team as these unusual observations represent NEW knowledge about bird populations, and eBird is all about characterizing bird populations. Observations that are not flagged add little to current knowledge (but are nonetheless valuable). When I go birding, I like to trip the eBird filters because I know these flagged observations are contributing to NEW knowledge of bird populations. 

EBird is improving with time. I'm glad the filter caught the early Turkey Vulture. Surely Dave's comment in response to the flag will convince the local reviewer to accept this noteworthy observation. If Derek also eBirded his early tV observation, and if others did as well, and these early reports prove to be more than an anomaly, the filters will eventually be altered to reflect the new reality.   

However, as Dave points out, the real anomaly -the misplaced Marsh Wren- was missed by eBird as being unusual. This is because the man-made filters are by necessity regional, referring to an entire County, or part of a county. Eventually, I believe that eBird will be able to convert to site-specific computer-generated filters. If a filter is tripped when an observation is rare (say, with 5% probability or less), and there are 100 checklists submitted per week for a site (roughly 5000 checklists total), then there would be enough data for the computer to determine which observations are unusual for each week. Currently, Grandview Cemetery has 635 checklists. 

So the moral of the story is this: if you don't like the man made filters in eBird, submit more complete checklists to eBird. If we all did this, we could convert to an unbiased computer-generated filter system sooner rather than later. 

Nick Komar

Fort Collins CO

Sent from my iPhone

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