eBird reporting and hotspots

[Steven Mlodinow]

Greetings COBRIDERS.

Van Remsen, a former Coloradan and now one of the world's foremost ornithologists, was visiting here last week. In preparation for his visit, he used eBird to decide where to go. In the process of this, he noticed that many lists contained birds that were clearly not seen at the location indicated. Sometimes this was stated in the notes (one list was for Crow Valley and Andrick Ponds, which are many miles apart and in different counties), sometimes not. 

The reason for eBird hotspots is, in large part, so that accurate bargraphs can be generated for that location as well as detect changes over the years at that location. Not near there, not on the way there (a small, but not tiny, number of lists start at the persons home and then continue to the final destination), but at the hotspot. Some locations are nebulous (like "near Behrens Reservoir), so a 5 mile radius makes sense. Some have discrete, or fairly discrete boundaries such as wildlife management areas, state parks, etc. Please, help keep the data accurate by only reporting what you see at a given location. For instance, Crow Valley and the actual Pawnee Grasslands (that is, Murphy's Pasture) are different spots. Please don't combine them as one list. It confuses those who will try to use these data to make management decisions or discern trends. For instance, this year there are a number of Lark Buntings at Crow Valley. This is unusual. If you've been combining lists from Crow and Murphy's Pasture, that oddity will be obscured.

Thank You for your patience by reading this. Your help would be most appreciated

Steven Mlodinow

Longmont CO

[Paul Hurtado]

(No sighting; Longish post)

Thanks to Steven for bringing up the issue of getting accurate location details into our eBird checklists.  A few suggestions for those of you compelled to "clean up" existing checklists with potential location issues (and suggestions for moving forward):

First, it's better to be too "coarse" with your location information than to use an existing but inappropriate hotspot. In the example that Steven mentioned, spanning multiple existing "sublocation" hotspots at Pawnee Grasslands, it's better to move that checklist to the most all-encompassing hotspot (find it via the new Hotspot Explorer under the Explore Data part of the website) or even just do a county-level hotspot if it really spans too many locations. Or, if you have trip notes, sometimes you can split these things into two or more checklists. When it comes to eBird data, it's much better to be accurate than to be precise. ;-)  

Second, don't over-rely on hotspots and instead use well-named personal locations as your default way of submitting checklists. Only use hotspots when the personal location you would create is basically the same location. :-) For info on eBird location name conventions, see http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/1006824-what-is-an-ebird-hotspot-?b_id=1928. You can always merge your personal location with a hotspot later on. 

Also, ALWAYS pick your locations via the "Find it on a map" option. Don't trust location names to match up with where you're birding unless it's a location you submit checklists for on a regular basis, and don't trust a hotspot for a place as big as a national grassland or national forest to be located in the small area you happen to be birding.  When in doubt, create a personal location from the map. 

If you have an old checklist that you submitted to a nearby hotspot but should have created a personal location for it instead (e.g. you know more accurate and/or precise location information from checklist comments or notes) you can always update that checklist location via the "My eBird" part of the website and the "Manage my checklists" link on the right. Consider putting a note in the checklist comments documenting the edit and why. 

Alternatively, you can also move ALL checklists associated with a location by merging that location with another. This is really only done to merge an old personal location with a newly created hotspot or hotspot sublocation, and affects ALL checklists associated with that location. "Manage my locations" on the right side of the "My eBird" page.    

A word of caution: please be thoughtful when editing old checklists!  Plenty of ways your memory can play tricks on you, opportunities for introducing typos, etc.  Best to let old data rest in peace unless you have very good reason to change it. :-)

Finally, keep reports in the right county.  Submitting observations in the wrong county is another common mistake that arises when birding across (or very near) a county line -- and getting the county-level location info correct is a big deal with ebird data!  So be cognizant of county lines (which unfortunately don't show up on the google maps used by eBird), and when in doubt, take good location notes in the field so you can figure it out later when you get home. If you have a checklist that spans two counties and you have no notes or other means of distinguishing what went where, consider moving that checklist to just a state-level checklist and documenting what you can in the checklist comments. Particularly if you had uncommon or out of season birds reported on that list.

For more on why accurate location details are an important part of making eBird data more valuable, see http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/1006775-understanding-how-to-plot-your-location

Good birding,

Paul Hurtado

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Paul J. Hurtado
Postdoctoral Fellow, The Ohio State University
Mathematical Biosciences Institute, http://mbi.osu.edu/
Aquatic Ecology Laboratory, http://ael.osu.edu/

E-mail: hurta...@mbi.osu.edu
Webpage: http://people.mbi.ohio-state.edu/hurtado.10