Paul and all,
Tom and others have given the whys of entering eBird data.
The hows:
Your Pittock Mansion eBird list would use all the excellent data you presented.
You would choose Historical as protocol, only because you don't have
distance covered or time elapsed. BUT most old records are entered as
Historical; there's nothing wrong with that. I would venture a guess
that you easily have more data than the average Historical list in
eBird.
The data you have is rich:
-Numbers of individuals
-Even the 8 Swallow sp. can be entered as such
-It appears you probably noted ALL the birds you detected, so you note that.
-Exact location and date and start time. (Pittock Mansion is a
hotspot, so easier to enter.)
-You could even enter the "overcast, breezy" in comments if you wanted
too. (Quicker would be to leave it out.)
I have recently offered to help get you started and when questions
arise, and can still do so over the phone or something like Zoom (to
enable us to see each others screens).
Jamie Simmons
Corvallis
On Thu, Apr 2, 2020 at 2:11 PM Paul Sullivan <paultsullivan@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
POST: Send your post to obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
John, good to hear from you, my friend.
At last you sound like someone who understands. You’re not telling me I
“should” enter my data in eBird. You’re saying it’s a lot of work, It’s
memories, and for you, fun.
What does a “historical” eBird checklist look like? You can’t enter miles
traveled or hours spent. You can’t divide up a day at Malheur NWR into
checklists for each pool, each road, Frenchglen, Page Springs, etc. Do you
enter numbers of birds for each species or just an “x”? And when you’re
done, is it worth the effort?
For example, here’s my list for PIttock Mansion 21 years ago on March 31, 1999
7:30 AM overcast, breezy
10 Robin
3 Varied Thrush
10 House Finch
3 Siskins
1 male Anna’s Hummiingbird
1 Red-breasted Nuthatch
1 Band-tailed Pigeon
20 Canada Geese
8 Swallow sp
4 Steller’s Jay
1 Red Crossbill
5 Bushtit
1 Winter Wren (now Pacific Wren) one or more heard
1 Brown Creeper
How would you put that data into eBird (historical)?
Since 1980, we’ve had 14,703 days. I probably have recorded data for 5,000
of those days. How long would it take to enter that in cBird? Is it worth
the effort?
Thanks,
Paul
From: John Gatchet [mailto:jfgatchet@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2020 11:44 AM
To: paultsullivan@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Robert O'Brien <baro@xxxxxxx>; obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [obol] Re: eBird
I have been following this thread. I have chosen to enter all my old
checklist on Ebird using historical. I started with 1960. I will admit this
is probably not the most scientific data. I now live in the same location. My
entries show that Ruffed Grouse were plentiful. This is no longer true. There
were Dipper on small creeks that are now only seasonal.
My submissions for 10 years in Wisconsin over 40 years ago show some species
have significantly declined. I birdied some of these areas a few years ago
and found this to be true.
I am now almost finished entering checklist for Oregon and Washington for
2005 and 2006. I will only have 5 more years to go. It has been a journey,
but also a good way to relive past birding trips with old friends and some
who are no longer with us such as Ken Knittle and Joe Evanich.
Ebird may have clutter and certainly there are mistakes.
It may all be foolishness, but it is fun. Birding is about having fun and
enjoying the birds in what ever way people choose to do it.
John F. Gatchet
Gardiner Beach
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 1, 2020, at 10:21 PM, Paul Sullivan <paultsullivan@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Bob,
I meant people under 30 years of age. I wasn’t saying under 30 people use
eBird.
You and I are in the same demographic. We have a trove of records in our
heads, but also in notebooks, checklists, etc. However, they don’t fit the
paradigm of eBird. We didn’t record miles walked or hours spent at each pond
or fencerow or grove, and divide up the day’s count of mallards and scrub
jays into separate buckets on May 15, 1984. So our data is “just
historical.” It doesn’t fit the eBird matrix.
I know a friend of our generation who entered his old data into eBird. It
took him years to do it.
Today’s birders report the number of Brewer’s Blackbirds by the dumpster each
time they visit Fred Meyer !!! My argument is that there is too much
inconsequential clutter in eBird. When proponents brag about the number of
checklists, I think there is a lot of chaff in there. I find data entry and
retrieval extraordinarily difficult. I wonder how useful the data set is for
science. Do we need to know how many scrub jays were in this bush and that
bush and that bush? Who will use that information?
Paul
