The most ridiculous missing eBird entry

I will not be discussing individual, local eBird filters lacking the "dabbling-duck sp." entry, either having a zero limit or missing entirely, thus forcing one to "document" those distant ducks mired in shimmer in late August. No, these missing entries are much more egregious because they don't exist in the system at all!

Warning: This post gets into the minutiae of Red-tailed Hawk subspecies and the relevant eBird filter options.

The Red-tailed Hawk eBird entry options relevant to Canada, the United States, and northern Mexico are listed below (in alphabetical order), with the brackets providing the accepted English names of those subspecies (or subspecies pair).

Red-tailed Hawk (abieticola) [Northern]

Red-tailed Hawk (borealis) [Eastern]

Red-tailed Hawk (calurus/abieticola) [Western/Northern]

Red-tailed Hawk (calurus/alascensis) [Western/Alaskan]

Red-tailed Hawk (fuertesi) [Fuertes's]

Red-tailed Hawk (Harlan's)

Red-tailed Hawk (krideri) [Krider's]

Red-tailed Hawk (umbrinus) [Florida]

Did you notice what entries are missing from the entire eBird nomenclature? Yes, Alaskan and Western Red-tailed Hawk subspecies lack their own entries; instead, they must share slash entries. While Alaskan and Western light morphs are quite similar and difficult to distinguish, the characters that enable identifying Western are known widely, as they are presented in most popular field guides and have very detailed entries in the various North American raptor-ID field guides. And the subspecies lacks an eBird entry of its own despite having a very large breeding range in which it is the only subspecies known to breed, and in which other subspecies intrude only at the edges, and nearly always outside of the breeding season.

In Colorado, from the eastern foothill edge to the Utah border, calurus is the only breeding subspecies. It is also the only breeding subspecies expected in Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, and California. If Eastern, Florida, Fuertes's, Harlan's, Krider's, and Northern Red-tailed Hawks have eBird taxonomy entries each to themselves, why is Western left bereft? Only the Eastern and Northern Red-tailed Hawks have an extent of range that can match that of the Western subspecies. All of the other Red-tailed Hawk subspecies' ranges are minuscule compared to the ranges of those three.

Nota bene: For those interested in the particulars of Northern Red-tailed Hawk, please see:

Liguori, J. and B. L. Sullivan. 2014. Northern Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis abieticola) revisited. North American Birds 67:374-383. {PPCO Twist System}


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The morass that is the rating of eBird photos

 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...
Read more

Red-shouldered Hawks in Florida...

 ... 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...
Read more

Lubbock County, Texas, USA

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...
Read more