eBird Commentary

 Many, many moons ago, eBird created the facility to upload photos into submitted eBird checklists. As with nearly everything eBird, this has been a wonderful and highly useful tool... as well as something of a headache. It also, once again, points out the flaws of establishing something for the general public to use and then not policing it. And that is exacerbated by the most widespread problem (not just in eBird) of crowd-sourced data: No one reads the freaking manual (point A). I thoroughly understand why eBird does not police the rating system of photos and audio files: It's a task that is impossible to fund, and that's certainly why eBird has crowd-sourced rating media. However, please refer to point A. I am occasionally astounded by some fairly horrible photos with only a single rating (presumably by the photographer) of ★★★★★. While that problem is eye-popping, what truly confuses me is those less-than-stellar photos getting multiple ★★★★★ ratings. And, no, I am not wri...

My name is Tony. I am an eBird photo-review junkie. I have a problem. Is there a support group for my particular addiction? I look at the recent photo feed nearly every day. Oh, not as a whole. Yes, I do scrutinize the first 30 photos in the take, usually finding no identification mistakes (usually, but not always). However, what I am after in my dependence-derived daily dive into the search for misidentified subjects of photos submitted to eBird is focused on a very few species. One might say hyper-focused. For the most part, I review the photos of species that have proven to be difficult for the average Joe eBirder. Quick! Which two-species ID conundrums come to mind when asked to name the most frequently-mistaken identifications from Canada through the United States and Mexico to some points farther south? I am certain that most experienced birders could guess the two combos I intended when devising this essay's title. No, Trumpeter vs. Tundra is not a problem-child duo in my e...

This is a post I should have written more than a year ago, because eBird seems to have cleaned things up a bit since June 2023 when I noticed it. First, some background. American Robin is a polytypic species, with Pyle (1998) delineating five subspecies as occurring in Canada and the US:     caurinus  -- breeds coastally from southeast Alaska to northwest Oregon and winters south to southern California     propinquus  -- year-round in the interior from south-central British Columbia and southern Saskatchewan and south to coastal southwest California east to western Texas     migratorius  -- breeds from Alaska south and east to central British Columbia then to central Quebec and southeast to New Jersey and winters south within that range but also south from New Mexico to Florida     nigrideus  -- breeds from northern Quebec through Newfoundland, wintering south to Mississippi and Florida     achrusturus  -- year-r...

 ... are quite common, and that points out one of the insidious problems with the eBird process of review of reports. First, a digression. The single most widespread problem with eBird is that eBirders are not required to understand how eBird works, what different sorts of entries mean, and what they include... or exclude, or, even, be able to reliably identify individual birds by sight and/or sound. Literally, anyone can report data to eBird and, so long as entries do not trip relevant filters, eBirders can report whatever they believe or, worse, whatever they want. There is probably no more nearly invisibly pernicious effect on aspects of eBird caused by the ignorant eBirder than that engendered by eBird subspecies entries. eBird subspecies entries -- that is, those subspecies or groups of similar subspecies for which eBird provides individual entry options -- are impenetrable for an apparently sizable number of eBirders. So long as the subspecies entry selected by the eBirder is...

Since it was included as an example of eBird filters in eBird's Help Center , I am starting with a critique of this eBird region's filter. I happen to have experience submitting data to eBird in the county/region, so am personally aware of some of this filter's inadequacies, and I will begin very high up in the taxonomy with Cackling Goose. CAVEAT: I have no idea if what is presented in the aforementioned Help Center article reflects the current Lubbock County filter, because I have no idea whether or when that filter has been altered since eBird captured a snippet of the filter to use in that explanatory page. However, that ignorance does not affect my arguments below about filters and filter limits. Cackling Goose is an eBird problem child for two reasons, the first being that many eBirders are unaware of the potential for the species to occur nearly anywhere in the United States, and, second, even of those who are aware of the above, many have poor understanding of how t...

... there was word of mouth and, for some, publication options. For most, bird-occurrence data were unimportant and, particularly, unknown and unlooked for. With the advent of the widespread availability of telephones in houses, phone trees became established in certain cities to spread word of rare birds. Audubon societies and bird clubs spread and became sources of information on bird occurrence. Then the Internet came into being and was gradually co-opted for distributing information on the occurrence of, even, not-so-rare species. Then the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology said, "Let there be eBird," and it was... not so much good as better than anything previous. Excellent planning on the front end about some aspects of what eBird would do and how it would do it made for a reasonable stab at its first steps. The powers that be sussed that some sort of filter of incoming data would be required, but the thinking on that topic, in my estimation, was sub-par, even very poor...