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 writing about those photos that some skilled photographers might argue between ★★★★ and ★★★★★. What confuses me is the photos that I would rate ★★★ or even ★★ being given ★★★★★ ratings by (again, I presume) the photographer, since I find such photos in the first page or two of "Recently uploaded" photos.
Note #1: I am not a sound recordist nor a videographer, although I have both recorded and videoed birds with my phone. However, I treat only photos here, as I am not fluent with eBird's rating systems for those two media types, but sound recordists I know have told me that the problem with recordings may be worse than that with photos.
I thought I would provide a little quiz. Which of the following features relevant to an individual photo should people take into account to enter a rating of a photo uploaded to eBird/Macaulay Library?
➤ Composition
➤ Species
➤ Lighting
➤ Location
➤ Size of the subject relative to the image size
➤ Date
➤ Subject focus
➤ Behavior
➤ Clarity of the image as a whole
➤ The photographer's experience with the species
Before I give the answer to the quiz, here are
eBird's own guidelines (aka the unread manual) on rating photos submitted to eBird.
★★★★★ Excellent quality. High resolution and in sharp focus. Lighting should be good and the bird at least fairly large in the frame and not significantly obscured.
★★★★ Very good quality. High resolution and in good focus, at least decent lighting, and bird reasonably large in frame. One or two of these factors may be less than ideal and prevent from achieving 5 stars.
★★★ Decent quality. High or medium resolution with decent focus. Lighting might be less than ideal; bird might be smaller in frame or somewhat obscured. Might have several factors that prevent it from being rated higher.
★★ Poor quality. Could be a good image but at a noticeably low resolution, or high resolution but with significant flaws. Lighting might be severely backlit or poorly exposed. Image might be good but the bird is extremely small in the frame or mostly obscured.
★ Very poor quality. Very low resolution or very poor focus; bird may be very small or obscured in the frame or have extremely bad exposure. In general should only be uploaded as record shots, if still identifiable.
Note #2: I copied the ratings text directly from the eBird page linked above and did not fix any of the grammatical errors/telegraphic text to which Grammarly objected, although I did change the font.
Returning to the quiz, then, starting with the first item, Composition, it and every other factor are important to the rating. Yes, that means that there is no place in the rating scheme for rarity, specific plumage, behavior (e.g., flying versus dancing versus staring in your window), date, or location as part of any photo rating.
Returning to the ratings, I infer from eBird's guidelines that a photo in which the subject is not in sharp or (at worst) soft focus should earn that photo no more than ★★. Personally, I feel that any photo whose subject is not readily identifiable to species -- in the individual photo -- should earn no more than ★, That is, a set of photos (two or four or 23) cannot be rated as a set. Yes, the multiple photos may allow for identification of the individual to species, but in a single photo of an adult accipitrine hawk with blue upperparts flying mostly away from the camera, and with the bird's image accounting for 1-2% of the image, the subject is almost certainly not readily identifiable to species. However, a large-enough series could result in a series of ★ photos providing acceptable support of the submitted identification.
However, what I wonder most about photos is why there are so many ★★ and ★ photos of locally common species during times and in places in which the species is well known to occur. I've seen photos like that, and my response is typically, "Why bother?"
Finally, in this vein, I ran across an eBird account into which many, many lists are submitted from a yard, a yard in which, apparently, Eurasian Collared-Doves are frequent and common. eBirders have submitted 2,126 photos to eBird from the county in which that yard exists (as of the time I write this in the evening of 24 December 2025). Of those, that single eBird account I mentioned has submitted 1,946 of those photos... since June 2022. That produces an average of just over 1.5 photos of Eurasian Collared-Dove per day, every day.
Why bother?
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