Evolving eBird

[Mark & Sandra Dennis]

If you read the eBird discussion group's posts on Facebook there is considerable misunderstanding regarding the purpose of eBird, especially when it comes to the listing part. Although eBird is primarily a data collection system I suspect every user would like the option to retain the record of an escaped species on their checklist but not have it 'count' in the totals. So, should eBird put energy and resources into fixing this, or should they fix other quirks first, such as no real definition in the breeding menu for young that leave the nest but that have not fledged, or filters that don't make visible migration and sea bird counts additions when they come from historical watch points and how about super hotspots that you can use to view all the data for say, an island, and then get a truer overall view from one source. Just thoughts..

[David Bell]

Hey Mark,

As far as I know (from the various forums), eBird is already working on making a 'don't count on my list' option that people can use for any taxa. They're also working on turning hotspots into polygons rather than points, so that any checklist made from within the bounds of an area will go toward the hotspot totals. I'm guessing both of these will be available this year.

As for the young - they go under 'NY - nest with young' which I'm fairly sure covers young until they fledge and become more mobile.

High counts - yes it is possible to make location-specific filters but not really feasible given the amount of work county-level filters are! It's actually much less work to set the limits a bit low and just manually check off counts from concerted efforts (e.g. seawatch, hawkwatch, vis mig watch, etc) than it is to set them high and seek out erroneous high counts, or to manage filters for every hotspot/watchpoint.

Dom and I will do a (hopefully informative) post in the near future about how we decide on filter limits for various species and locations!

David

[James Churchill]

hi folks, 

a great opportunity for some discussion that I think gets missed in other forums. 

As a data contributor, manager and user in the conservation field, it would be great to hear how/which NS eBird data are being used by amateurs, academics, industry, NGOs, and also get feedback from others on what makes data most useful for their projects. For example, any and all observations submitted are likely useful for something at some point in time, but only a subset will be useful for local-scale conservation and planning. There are lots of reasons people are submitting data to eBird, but if they hope their data will be used for science, conservation, planning, it might be informative for them to know what type of eBird data is most useful for what types of projects.

A specific example of this is 'hotspotting' (i.e., setting the checklist location as the hotspot location instead of the true location surveyed). In my mind hotspotting has evolved mostly (only?) because eBird has developed summary tools specifically for hotspots (recent checklists, cumulative lists, last seen, first seen, bar charts..) as opposed to for user-defined areas. Hotspotting means that the precise locations for birds are lost which might be especially problematic (from a conservation standpoint) when hotspots cover large areas. Essentially, by only allowing summaries at the hotspot scale, eBird is making assumptions about the scale at which the data are most useful by data users. One solution to this could be to put size limits on hotspots, and then develop summary tools for 'super' areas like Mark mentions. Another solution could be to not allow a checklist to be ascribed to a general hotspot location, but a more precise location, and then the summary tools just consolidate data within polygon hotspot areas (like David suggests might happen?). Another solution could be for eBird or anyone else to develop more customizable summary tools where the summary area could be selected by the user (e.g., the user could choose to see summary data within a province/county/hotspot as usual, or a custom polygon they draw on the map, or a within a selected grid cell like a breeding bird atlas). Since most raw eBird data can be accessed via the ebird API logistically this would not be too difficult to accomplish.

It would also be fun, for those that were interested, to have some NS eBird, friendly competitions or goals. One idea could be to try to expand our understanding of bird distribution in the province by choosing to bird periodically in some of our NS eBird blindspots (e.g., most areas away from people and roads). Another could be to develop a grid of priority locations for the province where eBirders could carry out somewhat-standardized listening surveys or area searches if they were in the neighbourhood...

James Churchill

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[Blaine MacDonald]

Just a thought, but I also feel the more specific the location the better. If you walk a fair distance at a location it's hard to be specific about where you covered. When you find a bird you can cover with good notes about its location. When you don't find a bird, knowing where a person has looked could be helpful too. Are there any thoughts about selecting a "path walked" like you can select for measuring distance in some map software? That way if you walk 2-3 km's at a location, at least the path you covered would be there to narrow down some people's general lists where there are no notes. Don't know if it would save enough data reviewers time to be worth it, but was a thought.
Blaine