[wisb] Re: E-bird question
- From: "Cynthia Bridge" <cynthiabridge@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <nicka29@xxxxxxxxx>, "'wisbirdn'" <wisbirdn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:20:56 -0600
Nick can you talk a bit more about reporting at a "fine scale" and how the
hotspots play into this? I was told recently that where possible one should
try to enter birds in the predefined hotspots as opposed to creating
multiple personal locations for an existing hotspot. For example, when
recently birding the forest roads in Forest Co., I could have entered our
sightings for Divide Rd. (for example) in a fairly exact "personal location"
where the majority of the birds were observed or select the hotspot (which
by the way comes up in the middle of a bog closer to Giant Pine instead of
along the actual road). I selected the hotspot based on Tom Prestby's
advice to enter data by hotspots where available even though the hotspot
mark on the map was not as precise as a point I could have created as a
"personal location." Is this the correct thing to do?
Cynthia Bridge
Fort Atkinson, Jefferson Co.
-----Original Message-----
From: wisbirdn-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wisbirdn-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Nick Anich
Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2011 1:12 PM
To: wisbirdn
Subject: [wisb] Re: E-bird question
For the "high counts" under "view and explore data", that only draws from
single checklists. When they first introduced it, they enforced a 5 mile
limit to be included in high counts, but they ended up dropping that. Right
now county-level submissions show up as high counts, though I know that it's
intended that high counts should represent counts at smaller locations,
not huge traveling counts (and if you submit a multi-county count under the
guise of a county-level or personal location-level checklist, we're going to
invalidate it). Anybody can tally 500 Ovenbirds if they want to spend the
day driving the north woods with their windows down, but I don't know what
value that is. It's not the same density and doesn't provide the same
information as knowing you had 50 Ovenbirds in a small city park.
Your 50 chickadees at 10 sites will be tallied as 500 chickadees if you view
a bar chart for the county, click the species name, and then go to the
"totals" graph.
As far as entering observations at various levels of specificity, eBird
strongly encourages people to report records at a fine scale if at all
possible. If you bird 5 hotspots in a day, it isn't that much work to keep
separate lists for each site as opposed to a day list, and the resulting
observations are more useful for anyone who wants to see where you had
specific birds.
County-level submissions are often better than nothing, but they aren't very
informative. At times, the eBird guys have considered blocking county-level
submissions from the viewable data, but for the moment they are still
allowed. County-level observations have their use, primarily if you're
entering old data without specific locations or if you drove all across a
county without stopping at specific hotspots or particular locations, or if
you've got a sensitive species you don't want to plot exactly (though
city-level can work for the latter too). If you're going to submit a
county-level checklist, please do so using the county rather than plotting a
location so it misleadingly looks like you were in a particular spot. In
some areas of the country, if you submit a county-level checklist that makes
it look like birds were in inappropriate habitat (e.g., seabirds plotting
out far inland) the local reviewers will invalidate it, but at this point if
you're using county-level checklists appropriately, we're allowing them.
The "patch" definition Mike is talking about is primarily in regard to rules
for the patch listing game. In general, smaller locations are better, when
feasible.
eBird has articles up on using locations:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/location_specificity
and the high counts (and arrival, departures features):
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/modo-constituto-eu-sit
and many more articles like this can be found in the eBird news index:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about/ebird-news-index
Nick Anich
WI eBird
Ashland, WI
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