New website, eBird.org, offers free service to birders

eBird.org is an incredible resource available to scientists and the public.

Published Jan. 23, 2003, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “New Web site offers free service to bird watchers.”

2015 Update: The eBird team constantly adds new features that gladden the hearts of birders. And birders continually add records that gladden the hearts of ornithologists. eBird has become a major resource in every bird discussion. The limit of submitting historic records no older than 1960 no longer applies. I began submitting checklists regularly in 2007, for a total of 2,403 so far, including 361 species, in 20 states.

By Barb Gorges

With a chirp-chirp here and a chirp-chirp there, here a chirp, there a chirp, everywhere a chirp-chirp, Old MacDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-o.

The pursuit of bird counting has entered a new era. The National Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology have introduced http://www.eBird.org, a Web site where any bird watcher can keep track of his own data from anytime of year and have it compiled with everyone else’s in North America.

I’ve always looked forward to the annual tradition of the Christmas Bird Count, that 103-year-old institution. And I’ve adapted to Project FeederWatch and the Great Backyard Bird Count, recent additions to the citizen science field.

However, eBird sounds a little compulsive.

The only other list I keep is my life list. I check off names of birds in the index of my first field guide, now moldy and broken, when I see the species for the first time, and also record the date and place to make a kind of album of memories.

Unlike me, a lot of birders like to keep records. They keep a life list, a year list, maybe even a daily list, a backyard list, a trip list and lists for their favorite places to watch birds. There are several computer record-keeping programs just for birders.

eBird is free and allows you to enter your records from 1960 to the present. You will always be able to view them at the Web site, at “My eBird,” but you can also download them to your own computer.

Everyone can look at the maps and lists of compiled data, but personal information about participants is not publicly available.

Being a new site, there isn’t a lot of data to look at yet, so I chose to look up Ithaca, NY, home of Cornell. The data maps went back to 1984—for goldfinches anyway. I was impressed with the choice of 10 degrees of “zoom” available, from the whole continent down to a particular street.

Bird counts, such as the Breeding Bird Survey and Monitoring for Avian Productivity Success, done by professional wildlife biologists, ornithologists and other trained people, have strict protocol to eliminate certain biases so that data can be accurately compared from year to year and site to site.

The Christmas Bird Count, a volunteer effort, has fairly strict protocol as well, with each count in a predetermined area and survey forms that ask for number of observers plus time and mileage spent observing. Project FeederWatch and the Great Backyard Bird Count have protocols too, though much simpler.

Scientists have found that even though Project FeederWatch and the Great Backyard Bird Count participants are of all skill levels, the sheer quantity of data collected overcomes biases well enough to make data useful in monitoring population, mid-winter migration and disease trends.

Just what have eBird designers done to eliminate bias from the deluge of data they are asking for?

For instance, many people on a field trip will list the birds they’ve seen, but not count the number of each kind. Often the names of “trash” species, very common non-native birds, are never even mentioned.

If eBird scientists aren’t careful, they could be lead to believe that some of us see only one of a kind of each species—and no starlings and house sparrows!

Here’s how eBird works. It has four observation types. “Casual sighting” means there was no measure of time spent observing, distance traveled or area covered. You just wanted to note the Townsend’s solitaire you saw while out walking the dog Tuesday.

“Stationary count” means you recorded how much time you spent bird watching in one place, such as observing birds at your feeder.

“Traveling count” means you measured distance and time while on a bird walk or a trip by any other mode of transportation.

“Exhaustive area count” would be physically exhausting because you would be beating the bushes to count all the birds in an area of a known size.

And, if you didn’t count how many there were of a particular species, you can just mark “x” to mean a species was present.

I guess I’ll add eBird stationary counts to the others I do. When the PFW season ends in April, I can just continue counting birds in my backyard through the summer.

I tried entering the backyard birds I saw yesterday. Of several methods offered for locating my yard, I chose the aerial photo map. It is between 4 and 10 years out of date, based on building construction in my neighborhood.

It was a little difficult finding the birds on the checklist, but with time I’ll be more familiar with the process and I’m sure the site will improve.

eBird is being established at a critical time. When West Nile Virus got started in this country, it was the corvid species, crows and jays, which people observed dead or dying. Scientists think other birds may be just as affected, but are not as noticeable. Information from eBird might show if this hypothesis is right.

Counting is work. So sometimes we need to just relax and watch birds without scientific motives. I hope the eBird folks understand if I enjoy the sandhill crane mass migration along the Platte this spring and merely submit “Sandhill Crane — x.”