So far in this discussion more than one voice has said something to the
effect that the kind of distribution and abundance data I'm talking about
can be found in Birds of
Oregon (2003),
I would say that the printed Birds of Oregon is 20 years old. This season's
field notes are up-too-date information, tracking what is being seen on the
ground. Even that is dated by the time Oregon Birds hits our mailboxes, but
it is newer, and it is archived.
OBOL was even newer when people used it. Now it is waning. It is
archi9ved. The WhatsApp information is live, current, but full of "I'm
coming." and "where do you park?" clutter. And it is not archived. It is
ephemeral.
It's also been said that this kind of information can be readily pulled from
eBird. How many subscribers to Oregon Birds know how to do that? How many
folks on OBOL do?
I find exploring eBird Byzantine. You have to enter the species, then the
date range, then the state. You get a map full of pins. You have to open
each one to see how many of your selected species are mentioned. They say
"at the original location", but the pin is at a hotspot. You have to repeat
this for each species if you want to look across all the sparrows or other
species group.
I'm proposing to do this for you and put all the sparrows on one or two
pages, and present the data for the most recent Spring, Summer, Fall or
Winter. It's current info and it saves you the work.
I'm saying there's a tool for that. It's relatively easy to use and could
be done for each season without requiring a stable of 14 editors.
I do hear Dave Irons, Chuck Gates, and Tom Crabtree's (and others')
admonition that looking back to "the way we did it" will not appeal to the
next generation. They're off over the digital hill chasing a rare bird with
a long camera lens.
I know, I'm older than all of you,
Paul Sullivan
Born 10/21/1944
You remember President Truman?
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