[texbirds] Texas Century Club and (not vs.) eBird
- From: Chuck Sexton <gcwarbler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: TexBirds TexBirds Posting <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 12:40:10 -0500
TexBirders,
At the risk of opening up a can of worms, I wanted to briefly explore
the current relationship between TOS's Texas Century Club and eBird.
In private email exchanges over the past weeks and months, it has
come to my attention that some folks--including a few current or
former TCC county editors--have been under the impression that eBird
county totals are sufficient and appropriate for migrating to the TCC
web pages.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as I see it. For some
(small?) portion of present-day and recently-inspired birders, the
equation, "eBird totals = TCC totals" may hold true. I'm an active
eBirder; every significant bird sighting I've made since I retired at
the end of 2010 is in eBird. I'm happy to contribute to that
database and it's fun to keep up with it. It's a great program,
getting better by the day.
However, for those of us who have been birding far longer than the
life span of eBird, the accumulation of pre-eBird county records and
lists can be very significant! IMHO, the latter are *also* very
appropriate fodder for reporting in TCC totals, but we each will be
differently inspired to begin the monumental task of entering old
records into eBird.
For just myself as one (data junky) example, along with a filing
cabinet drawer full of loose notes and field checklists, I have over
70 hard-bound journals dating back to 1970, about 80% of which are
packed with bird records. Those journals average up to 200 pages
apiece, so we're talking about 14,000 pages of information to sift
through. In fact, for TCC purposes, I *have* gone through that
entire body of information to glean out my TCC county totals, which I
keep in an Excel spreadsheet with the first date of a species in each
county. That effort took the better part of 3 months to accomplish.
I've also begun the much, much slower task of entering those early
bird records into eBird, checklist by checklist. I'd estimate that
the eBird entry of that old data will take many years if I can
maintain the inspiration to continue the task. My TCC totals, if
extracted *only* from eBird, will essentially never be complete or
reliable.
So I guess my point is that I encourage everyone to use and improve
eBird with data entry and, for those so inclined, foreward your
county totals to the appropriate TCC editors to see how we all match
up. Both programs have materially enhanced our knowledge of Texas
birds. But for those of us with massive accumulations of "pre-
data" (i.e. pre-eBird), it should be kept in mind that eBird totals
and true TCC accomplishments may never be anywhere close to equal.
Chuck Sexton
Austin, TX
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