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Using eBird An easy way to make a big difference for bird conservation

Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 7:18 AM - Post Comment

Using eBird 
An Easy way to make a big difference for bird conservation

If you found $50 on a deserted street, you’d most likely bend down and pick it up; Very little effort, nice benefit. If a neighbor said they’d collect your empty beer bottles and use the return money for a charity you’d probably say “Sure, why not”; Very little effort, nice benefit, ….helps clean up the clutter around the trailer (US benefit, anyway...).

Now suppose someone offered you free software to track all of your bird sightings, keep your state, county and life lists, see the status and distribution of any species from sightings by you or thousands of other birders; AND, by using this software, you’d be contributing valuable information that could help researchers all over the world.

Seems like a no brainer: No cost, little effort, many benefits.

Well the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and National Audubon Society are making this very offer. It’s called the eBird project, located at www.eBird.org. By using their easy to operate online system, you can enter and keep records of your own sightings and at the same time help with important bird research and preservation efforts.

And it’s all free.

WHAT IS EBIRD?

Sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Audubon, and the NSF along with many other organizations, eBird’s mission is to collect observational data from the millions of individual sightings made each year by all levels of individual bird watchers.

Their site provides all of the easy to use tools you need to enter your bird checklist data, just they way you might do when using paper checklists or birding software. It stores the data for you, and provides easy ways to look at your Life, County, State and other lists.

You can also view the sightings made by everyone else who uses eBird, info that shows when and where birds migrate, when they might be seen in your area, what birds have been seen in your favorite birding spots, where birds breed, and lots of other useful information.

And more importantly, all data are made available to a wide range of research and conservation organizations including larger world research databases like the Avian Knowledge Network.

HISTORY

The original eBird site was funded by the National Science Foundation and designed by academically inclined scientists and engineers. The first iteration was a bit plain, and relied mostly on the good will of birders to input data with little hope of using it again or gaining other benefits from their effort.

A couple of years ago Brian Sullivan and Chris Wood joined the team. Brian had worked in the field for 12 years and wanted to find a project that could have a broader impact than the typically more isolated field research projects. Both brought a birder’s perspective to the project and designed the features in the current Version 2 software that make it rewarding for not only the research analyst but also, and importantly, the birders gathering all of the data.

Their efforts brought about a 10 fold increase in sighting entries, from 3,500 to 35,000-40,000 submissions per month.

By the way, Brian and Chris are excellent birders and members of the Cornell team that has won the annual World Series of Birding even two years in a row. No small feat.

WHY USE IT?

Think of all of the bird sightings you have made over the years. Then add to your lists the lists of the hundreds of thousands of other birders in the US.

That’s millions of bird records per year. All of these add up to very valuable information about bird distribution and abundance.

But by themselves, these millions of records are doing no good to anyone beyond the individual who made the sighting. This is valuable data sitting idle; data that could be of immense value in tracking presence of absence of species, showing population trends, migration paths, and breeding locations. Data that could be used to help direct and refine efforts to preserve breeding grounds, protect important fly ways and highlight species of conservation concern.

These data have a lot of value!

eBird’s mission is to collect these records, use sophisticated data-quality filters to verify it, and then make it available in a usable form for both individuals and conservation and research organizations.

HOW THE DATA ARE USED

First and foremost, the data are made available to research organizations doing bird studies through applications like the Avian Knowledge Network http://www.avianknowledge.net/ , the Nature Conservancy sponsored Nature Serve http://www.natureserve.org/ and other similar data sources for NGOs and researchers worldwide.

It also provides the data entry tools and reporting mechanisms for less well funded research organizations and field observers who can’t afford to set up the systems themselves.

More specifically here are some recent ways the database has been used

• eBird was helpful in a recent grassland conservation effort by the Bird Conservation Network in the Chicago area http://ebird.org/BCN/
• eBird was used to help make projections for potential avian flu movements across the US
• NASA has requested the data to predict bird traffic at their space shuttle launch site.
• In Virginia one of eBird’s regional experts, while “vetting” submissions, found a report of a wood stork, contacted the submitter, verified the sighting with pictures, and was able to release the location so many birders could see this rarity.

More information about eBird-related projects is on their site.

SCOPE OF THE DATA AND THE PROGRAM

Currently eBird covers North America, the Caribbean, and parts of Central America.

Soon South America will be added for full Western Hemisphere reporting and listing.

So you may still need some other software to track your European, African and Asian birding treks. However an upcoming data importing/exporting feature will make interfacing with other programs possible, reducing any need for duplicate entries.

eBird must add regions slowly as it has very rigorous standards for filtering and verifying data, which often requires the use of local experts to help “vet” the data.  This takes time and lots of initial ground work.

SO HOW EASY IS IT TO USE EBIRD?

I found eBird to be very intuitive and simple to use. With just one quirk noted below, it was in some ways easier to enter a day’s list in eBird than with any other bird-related software I’ve used in the past.  Depending on your internet access speed, the system can be a bit slow to bring up location and bird sightings data. But once you have the reporting form for your location loaded, entering your own trip list is very fast.

Here are the basic steps for putting in your first list.

Creating your account

Just like any other internet site that collects personal data, you have to create an account.

eBird makes this very easy.

Choose a user name, put in an email address and a password and you’re ready to go.

No return emails to wait for to get complicated access codes; in fact, no waiting at all.

The email address is used to contact you in case you report a sighting of an unexpected species, as noted above in “How the data are used.”

In a future version you will be able to opt to have people contact you for unusual things you have seen, and vice versa. The new version may even have a feature that will alert you when someone logs one of your target species….Wouldn’t that be great??

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Checking out distribution statistics is straightforward.

eBird’s data from all entered sightings are available on their site. You can look up the status and distribution of any species covered by the system, including your own sightings or sightings from everyone else using the system. And you can see that data in many different formats from frequency plots on a map to graphs of individual sighting counts.

Here are the steps for checking out Cerulean Warbler.

Enter the specie’s name

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Choose the kind of information you’d like to see.

Here's a map of all of the sightings reported for Cerulean Warbler

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The totals tab shows you the total count of this species reported across N Am on all submitted reports.

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Find out where the warbler is seen in April

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How about during breeding season?

Breeding season in certain counties where you bird?

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As you can see, this is very useful information.

And of course to a research project it could be invaluable.

Using eBird to prepare for a trip to a specific location

I was going to bird Bashakill State Wildlife Management area. So I brought up and printed out a status and distribution list for all of the recorded sightings for this NY State “Hot Spot”.

This is a very easy way to get a field check list for any location you may want to bird.

Entering your own sightings

It’s fairly straightforward and easy to enter your own sightings.

The first step is to pick a location, either from one of your previous locations, a supplied list of hot spots, or a new location.

Here are "My Locations"

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Hot Spots in NY State

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You can even use Google Maps to choose your location! This is very cool...

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Choosing Locations is one area that I did encounter a bit of an eBird quirk.

If I entered too much data (City and County and Zip) sometimes the system got confused and couldn’t come up with any locations.

But if I limited the input to State, the system always worked and I was always able to then filter down the location either using eBird’s hot spot location list or by using a map.

Once loaded, the entry screen is very fast to use. You just scroll thru the list and check off species seen, or preferably note the number of individuals of each species seen.

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You’re encouraged to enter every bird you encountered on your trip, even common species like European Starling….That helps with presence and also “absence” studies….
(Is there anywhere that starlings haven’t invaded..?  etc)

If you make a mistake and enter a bird that would be a really rare sighting, the software asks you to confirm your entry.

Here I accidentally entered Mississippi Kite instead of Osprey for Prospect Park in NY City… the software caught it and asked me if I was sure of that sighting..

If I had done the programming I might have used ruder language…But eBird is much kindler and gentler than I…

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The basic entry list that comes up gives all of the expected species for the location. There is also a selection to show all rare species on the checklist form.

I needed this to enter the Curlew Sandpiper I saw during a recent trip I led around Forsythe NWR in NJ.

Again, eBird asked me to make sure I meant to check off this unexpected species. And this time I did!

You can also add comments for each species. I often use comments to record specific ID thoughts or other info about a species I noted in the field on that trip.

Checking out your lists

Mine is a bit paltry as I’ve only entered one trip so far.

(But please note the Curlew SP….)

You can view multiple trip lists, month or year lists, and look at your data in a few different presentation formats.

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Monthly list

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Life List

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HOW GOOD ARE THE DATA?

Of course the data entered into eBird is only as good and accurate as the skills of the person recording the data.

To help “vet” the data and ensure that it is relevant and as accurate as possible, eBird employs sophisticated filters based on a variety of criteria including input from local experts who know an area well. Sightings that are out of season for an area, very rare or unexpected are flagged as mentioned above.

Whenever possible, regional experts periodically review all of the sightings data for their region, and contact people who have reported any sighting that needs verification.

The goal, of course, is to be sure that the data are as accurate as possible.

IMPORTING YOUR OLD RECORDS

Currently you have to manually enter your records. However eBirds is working with the major bird listing software companies and an upcoming release, now at the end of a one year beta testing process, will allow importing records from their programs, as well as Access and Excel, making it easier for the entry of legacy lists.

BACKING UP YOUR DATA

It’s very easy to download any trip list to an Excel file. It contains the trip dates and numbers seen. (I was a bit surprised that the lists don’t contain the scientific names of the species.)

I haven’t experimented with getting lots of lists out, but you can certainly capture your data for personal backup if you feel the need.

And of course the eBirds data entered into the site is backed up very rigorously on their end.

HOW CAN YOU HELP OUT THIS IMPORTANT PROJECT?

Here are a few things you can do to help the eBird effort

• Use the software
  It’s an easy and convenient way to record and store your sightings.
  Add your records to those of others across North America and provide data that can help in conservation of species and habitats
• Record every species, not just the special ones
  For researchers it’s very important to know all of the species that were present during your field time
• Record the number of individual birds seen whenever possible.
• Visit the same sites often
  Consistent reporting from one location gives much more complete and useful data
  For example, it seems that Cerulean Warblers are reported only during migration season for several sites in NY State where I know they breed. No one has reported them out of the typical migration-time birding trips. (More motivation for me to get my sightings into the system….)
• Tell your friends about eBird
  
  Also
• The eBird team is looking for those special local birders who have great status and distribution knowledge for a specific area. If you are one of those people who know all of the first sighting dates for the last 20 years for any species, get in touch with eBird. You can help with the “vetting” process by contributing to the Advance Data Quality filters used by the system.
  
  
• Volunteer your time
  Would you like to see 20 years of records of sightings from Gambell, Alaska? eBird could use some careful volunteers to enter lots of paper records from many interesting and important birding sites.
• Take a trip
  There are many locations in the US that are very under-birded; areas with very few birders, or areas just birded during certain seasons. For example, N and S Dakota may have only a few active birders for the whole area. If you have the interest and time, look into adding data for areas that are now under reported. You never know what you might find, and your sightings could uncover important flyways or range expansions.
  If you are interested in helping the eBird project, contact the team at
  Ebird@Cornell.edu

SO GO AHEAD, GIVE EBIRD A TRY

Log on to www.eBird.org. Take a look at sightings data for species you are interested in; enter one or two of your trip lists. You’ll see right away that the system is easy to use. And no doubt you’ll get hooked immediately!
Brian and his team are working on many new features for Version 3. It’s still a ways off but promises to make eBird even more fun to use and useful to us civilian birders.
But right now, the bottom line is that eBird is an easy way for civilian birders like us to play an important part for bird conservation.