Am I expected to know all of the minutiae of subspecies to be an eBird
reviewer? It makes my confidence very low to read this thread.
I made all of the changes to my two filters as suggested by eBird central
within a month of them coming out. This thread goes way beyond my
knowledge, and indeed beyond anything I am interested in, or will take the
time to learn.
I'm just doing a gut check here. I am way out of my league here in this
discussion. If this is the level of detail we are expecting should we be
looking for another reviewer to cover my current responsibilities?
I certainly admire the level of detail y'all get into but I am on the
outside looking in and will not step up to plate here.
What I will do is adjust the filters to reflect consensus, but they need to
be in a format as concise as the one eBird central sent out.
Hate to be a downer here, but I think you need to know my limitations and
boundaries.
I am committed to making Oregon eBird a great experience for the database
and it's users and will be sad, but dutiful in stepping down if I am not
meeting expectations.
greg
On Oct 5, 2016 3:09 PM, "Matthew G Hunter" <matthewghunter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jay and All,
I originally had the "don't clutter the checklist" mentality, but
eventually changed my mind to include what were reasonable (and
identifiable) options regardless of "clutter." This was in part due to how
***I*** enter checklists, which is with 4-letter codes on eBird mobile. In
other words, I DON'T USE A CHECKLIST! If I need something atypical, such
as a spuh or slash, I search for it. Even in the online/web version on can
just type in a code or name in the jump-to box. Some people, I don't know
how many, may enter their paper lists by just moving down through the
checklist on the screen. Even then, one can click on "Group by Most Likely"
and often times get most of the regular species sorted to the top. Anyway,
so ... I ended up just including all reasonable (and identifiable) options.
It certainly took away hours of head-churning trying to decide what to
include and what not in order to keep the checklist ... cleaner or
whatever....
(1) I have ssha/coha, coha/nogo, and accip sp.
(2) I have merlin, merlin (tiaga), and merlin (black), because when I see
one that is fairly obvious, I want to include it.
(3) I have dark-lored, oriantha, gambels, yellow-billed, and pugetensis.
(4) Song sparrows: for some reason I included Rufina group,
montana/merrilli, and heermanni group. I don't remember if I thought these
were identifiable, or if they were just suggested in one of the documents
or what....
(5) Currently, it looks as though my Douglas County filter includes
*nearly* the entire list of Oregon species. This gives people the option of
selecting a species that might be rare, but has occurred...in the state...
and conceivably could occur here if it has not already. The rare ones of
course are all zeroed out. However, I can see your point, Jay, that there
are expected "rare" (e.g. Sharp-tailed Sandpiper) or "often misidentified"
(fall Tree Swallows) that might be most appropriate for being available in
the checklist and zeroed out, whereas other species, such as Streaked
Shearwater and Little Bunting, we might not want to have on the checklist
at all? I can see that point. ... To play devil's advocate... Would we
drive some people so far as to not even report a bird, or completely
discount their sighting, if the bird is not on the list? I don't know that
either way is perfect, but again, ... I don't have to make those decisions
if my standard is just to include most of the state list. Just to make it
known, I don't have Spruce Grouse on the Douglas County list. :-)
Anyway, I'm game for either way, so if any semi-consensus emerges, I'm fine
with that.
Matt
On Sun, Sep 25, 2016 at 2:22 PM, Jay Withgott <withgott@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi again everyone --
Here's Part II: a few observations and questions for us to discuss, in
the wake of my dealing with the non-species taxonomic category additions in
my county filters.
(1) I changed "Accipiter sp." to "Sharp-shinned/Cooper's Hawk" since at
least in my counties this is what most people mean (and if they really
thought they might have seen a Goshawk, they can manually enter "Accipiter
sp."). Looking at the maps, it appears as if most of us in w. OR have not
made this change. I think it's worthwhile for precision. (One could also
include both categories, though I opted not to in the spirit of minimizing
complexity on the blank checklists.)
(2) What are people's thoughts on whether to include black (suckleyi)
merlin as a taxonomic category as well as the taiga merlin? Dave's
document suggests it might be reasonable to do so. I find I'm often seeing
merlins around Portland that I can't quite place, that seem maybe dark
enough to be suckleyi, but I've never had a great feeling for how clear-cut
the distinction is. I think we should not include richardsoni (prairie),
as it seems to be pretty rare, but I could easily be talked into including
2 of the 3.
(3) On 15 Feb. 2016, Wink Gross queried this group about the pugetensis
White-crowned Sparrow situation, and I ran into the same issue yesterday
before re-discovering his email today. Essentially eBird's spreadsheet
asked everyone to use the "yellow-billed" taxon because it is so difficult
to distinguish pugetensis from nuttalli -- yet it is universally agreed
that in Oregon they're all pugetensis. Soon Matt Hunter passed an email
from Marshall Iliff along to us that directed us: "Just validate the
pugetensis from Oregon. We know that's what they are, and any future
records should be validated too. We just don't want to encourage users to
try to parse pugies and nuttall's, which gets near impossible down in
Monterey Co. etc. So we don't ever need to go from specific (pugetensis) to
general (Yellow-billed), but for filters we do want to encourage
Yellow-billed and Gambel's and Dark-lored rather than the more specific
options."
It appears from a quick look at maps that a few OR counties have
switched to yellow-billed but that most have stayed with pugetensis. Maybe
some do both; I did not take time to really check. My own tentative choice
was to stay with pugetensis, but I could be talked out of it if there is
consensus about what we should all do together. Be aware that if you
switch to "yellow-billed" your queue will get filled with old pugetensis
reports (800 in Mult Co) -- however, this is not really a problem, as you
can sort by species and validate them all at once in a batch by holding the
shift key when you click the boxes for the first & last ones. Whatever we
do, we should NOT invalidate old pugetensis reports that appear in our
queue if we switch to yellow-billed, as that would be throwing out good
information people have taken care to report.
(4) Song Sparrows! Please enlighten me, anyone who can. All(?) of the
breeding Song Sparrows in NW Oregon I believe would be in the "rufina"
group, correct? But in winter we also get paler ones from further N & E,
right?, and I'm unclear if these are supposed to be "merrilli", or
something else? And if they're merrilli, eBird has the "montana/merrilli
group" for us to use -- but in poking around online in some admittedly
shallow & quick research, it seems that what's called "merrilli" has been
taxonomically placed in different ways, including inside the rufina group.
And of course even the number of Song Sparrow subspecies varies according
to who you talk to, ranging from the 20s to the 30s, and probably both less
and more than that. My reading of BOGR didn't clarify things for me too
much. So my question is: Is there enough clarity about Song Sparrow
subspecies and which occur in various areas of Oregon so that we should
include any of the subspecies categories in our check
lists (and if so, which ones, where)? Or is this situation too squishy
to really deal with effectively?
(5) Is there any mandate from eBird -- or any rule of thumb -- about
what SPECIES are supposed to be included on a county filter (and thus,
checklist)? When a user opts to view all the "RARE" species on their blank
template checklist, should those rarities include every species ever
documented within the county? Or is this up to our discretion as
reviewers? My thinking is that to include species that have been seen just
once or twice or 5 times ever in a county is overkill and could mislead
incautious birders to believe that Leach's Storm-Petrel might actually have
been a reasonable possibility for that Barn Swallow they glimpsed badly
last week over a pond in Yamhill County. But before I go deleting such
species from my county filters, I thought I'd better ask about whether
there's a rule on this, and on what other folks feel about the issue.
THANKS for your thoughts on any of the items above,
Jay
Account management and archives: www.freelists.org/list/orebird
Reviewers for Oregon Counties: http://tinyurl.com/n4k64ef
