Location in eBird - please choose correct hotspot

[nha...@antioch.edu]

This is a reminder that location for an eBird checklist is meant to represent where the birder was located throughout the time of that checklist, not where they were looking towards. If you are standing outside a hotspot or in hotspot B rather than hotspot A, then do not assign the list to hotspot A. 

When multiple hotspots are close together, for example in Hinsdale (Hinsdale Setbacks, Hinsdale Bluffs,  Fort Hill Rail Trail, Lake Wantastiquet), if you bird across more than one location, then either stop one list at the boundary and then start another, or use a personal location with a descriptive name. If you were on the bluffs and not actually in Lake Wantastiquet, do not use the pin of Lake Wantastiquet. Otherwise, data will be wrong, implying open water habitat when multiple waterfowl are reported when in fact the water is fully frozen-over. Also, birders will be misled as to where birds are located, wasting their time and energy in the wrong location.

[Bruce Conti]

Interesting because a few months ago one of the people at eBird instructed the opposite.  I had been hiking around Spatterdock Pond in the Beaver Brook Reservation in Hollis, starting and finishing at the Whiting Trail, and placed my location at Spatterdock Pond.  I received an email from eBird instructing me to relocate to the nearby Maple Hill hotspot even though I hadn't been hiking through that spot, indicating that they preferred using a hotspot for data rather than a custom location outside the hotspot.  So I changed the location in my checklist.  I wish I still had the email.

On Thu, Mar 12, 2026 at 3:54 PM nha...@antioch.edu <nha...@antioch.edu> wrote:

This is a reminder that location for an eBird checklist is meant to represent where the birder was located throughout the time of that checklist, not where they were looking towards. If you are standing outside a hotspot or in hotspot B rather than hotspot A, then do not assign the list to hotspot A. 

When multiple hotspots are close together, for example in Hinsdale (Hinsdale Setbacks, Hinsdale Bluffs,  Fort Hill Rail Trail, Lake Wantastiquet), if you bird across more than one location, then either stop one list at the boundary and then start another, or use a personal location with a descriptive name. If you were on the bluffs and not actually in Lake Wantastiquet, do not use the pin of Lake Wantastiquet. Otherwise, data will be wrong, implying open water habitat when multiple waterfowl are reported when in fact the water is fully frozen-over. Also, birders will be misled as to where birds are located, wasting their time and energy in the wrong location.

--

Bruce Conti
B.A.Conti Photography www.baconti.com/birding.htm
¡BAMLog! www.bamlog.com

[Nora Hanke]

Hi Bruce,

That advice makes sense to me. NH Audubon eBird policy that applies in the Beaver Brook Association (BBA) situation is to try to locate hotspot pins at the most likely parking area for a trail system. This amalgamates checklists for excursions that may have started/finished at entirely different access points that serve the same area. Maple Hill barn has a large parking area from which people may walk down Cow Lane and eventually over to Spatterdock Pond, or trails to the West of the pond. People wishing to access the Whiting Trail, which has no real parking space, will probably park at Maple Hill barn.  A walk along Whiting Trail to and around Spatterdock Pond and back "belongs to" the Maple Hill hotspot, rather than to Beaver Brook Association--Brown Lane hotspot. Beaver Brook trails connect to each other and it is a judgement call as to whether a walk/ski in one area is more associated with Maple Hill or Brown Lane. If a checklist included areas represented by more than one hotspot pin, ie you were on trails served by Brown Lane parking AND by Maple Hill's parking, the checklist location choices include: end one checklist and start another when you cross an imaginary boundary (ideal); use a separate, personal location with a descriptive name (less helpful because it does not amalgamate your observations with others'). eBird central guidance on choosing location when there is more than one hotspot in an area is here. 

-Nora

--

Nora E. Hanke

MB,ChB, MS

email nha...@antioch.edu

tel. 603-484-1294

[gregt...@comcast.net]

The difference of a few hundred yards between where you are and where the bird is seems pretty insignificant from a data collection point of view. In addition, many hotspots are clearly designed to report where the bird is and not the birder, as for example Eel Pond vs. Jenness Beach. If hotspots were designed with “boundaries” in mind, this would be just one hotspot centered on 1A. The confusion is exacerbated by the opposite recent trend of marking hotspots at a parking lot entrance, which is great for people trying to find a location, less great for recording habitat and birding site. 

And clustered hotspots further increase confusion. Recording sightings in separate hotspots is a great idea — where it makes sense.  If there are a bunch of hotspots a hundred yards apart then separate checklists for each spot is less tenable, and I’m not going to start a new checklist every two minutes. Where there are no hotspots, in the Whites for ex, ebird’s guidance is to start a new checklist every 5 miles or so; by comparison, hotspots are striving for kind of excessive accuracy.  

Ebird would rather have the data collected than to not have people use ebird at all because it is too cumbersome.

[nha...@antioch.edu]

eBird exists to serve generate data but is designed to appeal to users, and there can be a tension between these two aspects. The integrity of data collection matters for the science values, and being considerate of other eBirders factors into accuracy of location, species ID etc. 

Personal locations and hotspots are points on the map, which represent areas rather than that point alone (except that a personal location for a stationary checklist might be where you really stood). Some points represent a well-defined area - conservation parcels, esp. if it has only 1 hotspot - but many have fuzzy outlines - contiguous hotspots within a named conservation parcel or a general area without a focal birding feature - which are defined in subjective ways. Some areas that have multiple hotspots also have a general hotspot that could represent birding across the real or imaginary boundaries - for example, the hotspot Great Bay - which in the latter instance could also represent aquatic-based birding (or not!). You could use the checklists's Comments section to specify.

Water bodies are common bird magnets. Eel Pond and other water body-based hotspots may have their pins (location markers) in the middle of the waterway, especially when the water can be viewed from multiple locations and/or parking and pedestrian access may occur from different locations. In these cases, the marker does not represent that the eBirder has to be in the water. But, sometimes the context of a hotspot indicates the hotspot does represent the eBirder being in the water. These include pins off the NH coast, and Lake Wantastiquet at Hinsdale. Hinsdale has multiple adjacent hotspots, with 3 representing being on land (Setbacks, Fort Hill Rail Trail, Bluffs), and the separate one called Lake Wantastiquet, with the latter located in the middle of the river. Lake Wantastiquet is visible from all three land hotspots, so its existence implies it represents aquatic-based birding, and presumably mostly waterfowl right there, as opposed to the predominance of land birds on a checklist generated from the other Hinsdale hotspots.