[MASSBIRD] MASSBIRD

[Patty O'Neill]

Hooray for George. He is 100% right. Massbird is the reporting site that works for everyone and every need! EBird is great. It's wonderful for record-keeping and hotshots with the computer but it does not fill the needs of the average birder. The same thing is happening in Rhode Island. Hardly anyone is reporting to Pollypie.



And, I guess this puts more of an obligation on us everyday birders to report to Massbird more often. And to remember to convert to plain text before I send.



And I probably should be reporting to ebird more often as well.



Thanks George.



Patty O'Neill

Milton MA

pattyoneillatverizon.net

[Soheil Zendeh]

This is in response to what Patty O'Neil and George Gove said about the use (or nonuse) of massbird to report bird sightings.

Sean Riley, the DCR supervisor at Belle Isle Reservation in East Boston, periodically sends out reports of interesting birds at Belle Isle (such as the Stilt Sandpipers he saw today), but I found out by talking with him that he files ebird reports frequently from the reservation. Of course shorebird numbers have been increasing recently and I was very interested in keeping up with what he was seeing. I asked if he could share his ebird lists with me and massbird. As you may have seen in the past week, that is exactly what has been happening -- we now get regular Belle Isle reports from Sean.

Before Sean started forwardig his lists, I thought I could get complete lists for a given location emailed to me from ebird. But no way. Only rare birds are reported regularly if you put yourself on the ebird alert list -- as George Gove pointed out. Or maybe I don't know how to tweak ebird correclty? So far, it seems that using massbird is the only sure way to share a whole list with the birding community. So I stand squarely with George and Patty: Folks, please post your bird lists to massbird.


Soheil Zendeh
42 Baker Ave
Lexington, MA 02421

[Linda Pivacek]

Thanks to George for focusing attention on posting to Massbird. And thanks to all who do post on Massbird. And a standing ovation for Barbara Volke. (OK, take your seats again :-)

I am grateful that Soheil takes the time to do a great job of posting on Massbird as well as other local sites. And as he noted, Sean Riley has begun posting the Belle Isle birds on Massbird - great birds!

Trust this discussion will support Massbird's continued success. 

Go Massbird,

Linda

Linda Pivacek, Nahant, lpiv...@comcast.net

[Jonathan Jones]

Hi folks,

I think there is at least a partial technical solution to this.

If Barbara (or someone she delegates) were to create an account on eBird with the e-mail address as "mass...@TheWorld.com”, said eBird account could be configured to receive e-mail alerts for rarities. This can be done on a county-by-county and/or a statewide basis, and the alerts can be sent daily or hourly.

This way, any rare reports in eBird from Massachusetts would make their way to MassBird. We’d only need to decide the frequency and the area(s) of interest.

In addition to rare bird alerts, we could also do “Needs Alerts”, which are used to report all birds seen in the area, rare or not. If we do this, I recommend sending it daily and not hourly.

Thoughts? I’ll volunteer to set this up, though it probably makes sense to be in Barbara’s control.

Jonathan Jones
Wrentham, MA