[texbirds] Re: Feral birds in ebird
- From: David Sarkozi <david@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Janet Rathjen <j.rathjen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 11:35:59 -0500
Janet,
There are a couple of points to remember.
1) eBird is not an ABA listing program, it counts birds differently than
the ABA listing game. The goal is to document birds in the wild, preferably
with a method that can be used for analysis.
2) The only feral designations they are using I believe is when the feral
birds can be identified in the field from the true wild population. Muscovy
Duck is one of these.
3) adding a field as you suggest (and a check box is a field) is very
complicated in a mature database with many many front ends to it. A lot of
software has to be updated.
Imagine the nightmare for reviewers trying to decide what to do with House
Finch in Texas. Are birds in Houston feral birds from the introduced east
coast population or birds from the naturally expanding western population?
How about in San Antonio and Austin? Could any of those birds be thought of
as a pure wild population?
Where feral populations meet wild populations and the birds are genetically
identical, could you ever call any bird a non-feral bird?
I do have a partial solution for those who want to show they have a pure
ABA list in the stats though. After your last name add the designation ABA
in your eBird profile like many do for the TCC, for example Sarkozi, ABA.
Then go through and purge the non ABA countable birds from your lists, but
be sure to change the list "Are you submitting a complete checklist of the
birds you were able to identify?" to NO.
I guess those who go out and seek out Introduced and Exotics could add I&E
after their name too.
I would be curious to see the standings if anyone does this. If there was
significant buy-in from those who are serious about the ABA game, the could
just dismiss the lists of those who don't want to add the ABA designation
after their name.
On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Janet Rathjen <j.rathjen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Is there not a way that local reviewers could designate whether birds
> hitting their filters are feral or wild? This could be done at the state
> or county level depending on how the birds are accepted by the local
> regional authorities and ebird would not have to make those decisions
> world-wide. I'm thinking there could be a check box that reviewers could
> check, behind the scenes as with the filters, when non-wild birds are being
> submitted to ebird in their area (such as Egyptian Goose).
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