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...