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A half-year's worth of eBird - Posted at 7:28 PM on Sunday, May 11, 2008 by Chris Conard
Western Screech-Owl sleeping in one of Jeri Langham's nest boxes on 3/1/08.

Since last October, I've been entering an eBird checklist everyday.  eBird is an online checklist program that stores data where it can be accessed by North American Birds editors, scientists studying climate change, or folks just interested in where a particular species is being recorded.  I have a personal goal of entering an eBird checklist every day (one day I had to resort to birds seen at the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport:  starlings, pigeons and a Red-tailed Hawk).  Once you get in the habit, it takes less than ten minutes to enter a checklist (a broadband connection helps!).  It's kind of like the Great Backyard Bird Count--just every day.

A nice arrangement of Mourning Doves behind Jeri's house.

One concern that is often expressed is about the quality of the data.  Remember the acronym that never seems to come up anymore (though it probably should):  "GIGO"--garbage in, garbage out?  There are people entering their data into eBird ranging from ornithologists and top-notch birders to first-time feeder watchers--and everyone in between.  To address that, many counties now have a county-level filter in place which flags reports that are outside the norm (either by range, season, or numbers).  Locally, there are good filters in place for Yolo and Sacramento (maybe some others).  There are also regional filters, but these are less precise.  The counties with filters also produce a seasonally appropriate (by month) checklist for your data entry (click "rare species" if a species you saw doesn't show up).  If you report something out of season, out of range, or a high number of a given species, the system with prompt you with an "are you sure" message.  These flagged data are also separated from the main database until they are reviewed by county or regional reviewers.  Regardless of the review, all data are permanently archived unless deleted by the person who entered the observation (each individual has control of his/her eBird list).  The county or regional reviewers can contact the observer submitting the report by e-mail for more information.  As each county gets a filter, the older data can be run though the filter to fine-tune the database.

Hunting White-tailed Kite interrupted by Kimya and me along the American River Parkway on 3/1/08.

The data amassed with even the current level of participation is really impressive.  The eBird managers have been trying to make these data useful for North American Birds editors by sending the seasonal reports to them.  Just for Sacramento County, there were 7,693 individual bird records for the winter period (Dec-Feb) for North American Birds.

Rough-legged Hawk at Cosumnes River Preserve (Valensin Ranch) on 2/3/08 during a Long-billed Curlew survey.

Depending on your time and how you are birding an area, you can enter time and distance traveled info (like a CBC).  You can enter total numbers for each species, mark an "x" just to indicate presence, or do a mix of both on one checklist.  The more you enter, the more useful the data will be in the future, but just having a date, a species, and a location can be useful data.  There is a lot of information on the site on various aspects of data collection and recording.

Golden Eagle on Lynch Canyon tour on 3/22/08.

Western fence lizard at Lynch Canyon.  Doing push-ups and showing off his "dewlap."

For county and state listers, eBird gives you a breakdown of all of your observations by county.  You can also see your species list for a given location.  For a given species, you can see every time you've ever recorded it, every time for a given location, county, or state. 

Lark Sparrow at Table Mountain on 3/16/08.  The flower show was down this year--it was one of the driest springs on record.  This is a wonderful site we try to visit every year.  Here's a link to last year's visit (scroll past the Merlin, etc.).

With eBird, your data are in a permanent archive, so if your files burn up or you pour coffee on your computer, all won't be lost!  Imagine all of the thousands of lifetimes' worth of files or old floppy disks that have been tossed into dumpsters by family members who didn't realize their value when birders have passed away.  To steal an idea from Ed Pandolfino's talk at the Central Valley Birding Symposium, we can achieve immortality through our eBird data!

Burrowing Owl in Natomas (north Sacramento) on 3/27/08.

I was doing a raptor survey there, and this guy was on the levee right outside my vehicle window.

Canada Goose in the Campus Commons neighborhood near Sacramento State.  Pretty light on this pretty-but-almost-so-common-as-to-be-mundane species.  A Hermit Warbler was a real surprise this day (3/29/08).  It must have been wintering in the nice conifers in the area.  Either that, or it was a very early migrant.

Dunlins at the Bufferlands on 4/2/08.


More later.  I've uploaded some new photos (and one video) here.
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