[wisb] Re: Off-Topic: eBird Data Entry for Difficult Species
- From: Nick Anich <nicka29@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wisbirdn <wisbirdn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:42:46 -0700 (PDT)
Mike and list,
We have put a lot of thought and effort into designing the eBird checklists. We
welcome suggestions, but I think it would be easy to go overboard by adding too
many options to the regular checklists.
Here's how the checklists work, if you're not aware. Behind the checklists you
see are filters that allow certain species to show up or be hidden on the main
checklist for each month, and there are number thresholds that flag high
counts.
Things can be customized by month for each county. Right now WI is split into
8 different groups of counties, and will soon be 10 when we finish splitting
the
Lake Michigan counties into 3 zones. (Tom Prestby recently made a first draft
of
those, I'm going through and still tweaking them a bit).
eBird has a massive number of options for reporting things including above the
species level (e.g., duck sp., Catharus sp., Short-billed/Long-billed
Dowitcher)
and other subspecies, hybrids, or forms (e.g., Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle),
American Black Duck x Mallard, Red-tailed Hawk (Krider's)). You can read more
about these options and view the entire taxonomy here:
http://ebird.org/plone/ebird/about/ebird-taxonomy
It's a balance though, when determining how many of those non-species should go
on the main checklists. We could add about 80 more possibilities on there, but
then it's going to take that much longer to go through the checklist every
time.
So right now, we've got just the subspecies and spuhs that we consider to be
the
most commonly seen and used. If there's consensus about something that should
be
on or off of there, we can do that, but seeing as it's relatively easy to
quickly pull up any possibility yourself, I'd like to keep things fairly
streamlined. As John just posted via Andrea, if you'd like to find any species
not on the main checklist, you can do so by clicking "rare species" at the top
and then if you don't see it, typing in the "add species" box.
Nick Anich
Ashland, WI
From: Mike Duchek <mikeduchek AT hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:43:08 -0500
If that's the case, this might be an oversight in how eBird is set up. I would
not think these options should be relegated to the "rare species" list in
eBird. In other words, I would assume/hope that whenever bay-breasted and/or
blackpoll warbler is possible in [county X] (well, at least during fall
migration when confusion is possible), the indeterminate option for
bay-breasted/blackpoll should also be available. Or maybe they want to
discourage using these indeterminate options for some reason. In any case, it's
my understanding that there are a few people who set up how eBird works in
Wisconsin (i.e., what options are available, which I think is by county/time
period) and maybe one of those people could comment (Andy?). I personally would
not have thought to look under rare species for these options, so I'm glad I
know now. But if they prefer that we leave it just as warbler sp. (which is not
listed under rare species) that would be good to know as well. On a related
note, there is an item on eBird today that goes more into detail about how
data
is used and interpreted. Of particular note there is an option when you enter
a
traveling checklist that says "Are you entering a full list of all the
species..." and what you check here can affect how your data is used for some
purposes. http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/effort_based_obs Just
personally, I'm still learning a lot, and sometimes use the option to say that
I did not report everything I saw, because I don't want my data to be used to
show what is/isn't in a particular area, especially because I don't know songs
as well as some people. Although a lot of eBird users are very advanced
birders, I don't count myself among that group although I try to be extremely
cautious about what I enter for that reason. -Mike Duchek, Waukesha,
Waukesha Co.
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