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Subject:

Recent eBird upgrades and news--listing correction, bulk upload, etc.

From:

"Marshall J. Iliff"

Reply-To:

Marshall J. Iliff

Date:

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:39:54 -0500

MDOsprey,

I wanted to point out several significant upgrades to eBird
(http://ebird.org), which is an online bird checklist database, personal
listing program, and means by which you can store your bird sightings, share
them with scientists, and give your day-to-day birding greatly increased
utility. Our usership is growing rapidly and we recently crossed a major
milestone with the submission of the one-millionth checklist (see
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/1000000checklists.html)! 

For those of you that tried eBird years ago and decided that it was clunky
and hard to use, I urge you to give it another try. The entire user
interface has been reworked in the past few years and the process has gotten
much more streamlined. We have put a lot of effort into streamlining the
program so that it runs faster. And again, it gives your sightings so much
more import by using them to generate the maps and graphs you see in the
"View and Explore data" tab, informing scientific efforts to understand and
record changes in the distribution and population of birds, and providing a
permanent archive for sightings that might otherwise fade into the internet
ether or collect dust in your notebooks. The data are shared with North
American Birds editors and state journal editors at the end of each season
and are persistently backed up on multiple servers.

Below are recent improvements to the site, and again, there are more to
come!

1) Life list--Finally, at long last, we have solved one of the long-term
bugs with the program. eBird no longer counts non-species such as "American
Black Duck x Mallard (hybrid)" or "scoter sp." toward your personal lists.
We want to allow eBirders to report these birds, but due to a listing glitch
these were being counted in species totals up until last week. Read more at
the eBird homepage or
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/2007listingchanges.html.

2) Bulk upload--If you have bird sighting data stored in a spreadsheet,
database (e.g., Access), or in a listing program that can be exported to a
CSV file, an Excel file, or some compatible format, it is now possible to
upload these directly to your eBird account. Detailed instructions can be
accessed here http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/Bulk_Upload.html or via
the top story on the eBird homepage. The instructions are lengthy, but the
process is really not that difficult. Simply follow the file format
described for "Checklist format" or "Record format". There are also some
tricks for getting text into an excel format, in case anyone stores bird
sightings in a MS Word document or something similar. Please feel free to
contact me directly for any help with this process.

3) Taxonomy--We have officially shared our "eBird taxonomy". This bird list
follows the AOU and South American Classification Committee nomenclature and
phylogeny, and includes every species, field identifiable subspecies,
hybrid, or "spuh" (e.g., scoter sp., Common/Hoary Redpoll) that one could
expect to encounter north of Colombia. It also includes all South American
species (not all subspecies Groups...yet) and a hodgepodge of other world
species, including all species known to have occurred as escapees in North
America. This list is sorted in taxonomic order and may come in handy for
anyone dealing with bird lists, especially lists that include taxa other
than species. Download the taxonomy in several formats here
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/2007listingchanges.html. (And let me
know if you spot any errors!)

4) eBird talks--A list of eBird appearances is available through the story
on the eBird homepage or here
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/eBirdroad.html. Please let us know if
you know of other eBird talks that we can add to this or if you'd like to
try to schedule a similar talk.

We are actively developing the site currently and plan to have a few more
significant upgrades coming out in the next few months. I'll keep the list
apprised as developments come along.

Until then, good eBirding! And as always, I am happy to answer any
eBird-related questions.

Best,

Marshall Iliff
eBird Project Leader

PS -- Mark: I tried to keep all references to Boston out of this cross-post!
Let me know how I did :-)...
-- 

-------------------------------------------------
Marshall J. Iliff
West Roxbury, MA
miliff AT aol.com
-------------------------------------------------
eBird/AKN Project Leader
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
159 Sapsucker Woods Rd.
Ithaca, NY 14850
http://www.ebird.org
http://www.avianknowledge.net
-------------------------------------------------