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Subject:

Excel Macro for teasing lists from eBird Data

From:

Michael Ostrowski

Reply-To:

Michael Ostrowski

Date:

Thu, 5 Jan 2012 11:58:10 -0500

Hi all,
     I have created an MS Excel Workbook that will take your eBird
data and produce many MD birding lists and other information including
almost all the lists Russ Ruffing is soliciting for the annual
locality list (many of which are not easy to obtain directly from
eBird). In particular the macro will provide you with:

1. County and state life and year lists (for all years) as well as
county close-outs for life and each year.
2. Month life and year lists as well as month close-outs for life and all years.
3. Eastern and Western Shore lists.
4. Number of new additions to your county and month lists for each year.
5. County x month lists for all years.
6. Spring and Fall late and early dates for each species for the state
and for each county.

And more!

If you would like to try it, please email me and I will send you the
workbook as an attachment. It should go without saying that you try it
at your own risk and I disclaim all responsibility for anything bad
that may happen though several people have been using it a couple
years with no issues.

At the moment, the macro will most likely only work in Excel 2007 or
Excel 2010 running in MS Windows. People have had difficulties running
it in the Mac version of Excel as well as earlier versions of Excel
for Windows.

Here is how it works
1. Go to eBird and click on My eBird.

2. On the right hand side, find the link for "Download my data." Click
on it and then click the submit request button.

3. Shortly after you will receive an email from eBird with a link to
download your data. Click it and save the file to your computer.

4. Open the eBird Macro Workbook (that you requested from me via
email) in Excel. You will probably get a message warning you that the
file contains a macro and asking if you would like to enable macros.
Choose yes.

5. Open your eBird data in Excel and copy all your data into the eBird
Macro Workbook. To do so click the top left corner of the sheet with
your data to select all the data. Now copy (right click anywhere in
the data and choose copy) and paste it into the eBird Macro Workbook
(right click on cell A1 and choose paste). Close the file you
downloaded from eBird.

6. In the eBird Macro Workbook, look at the top left of the Excel
window.  There is a menu called the Quick Access Toolbar. There is a
little disk to save, an open file button, an undo arrow, etc. On the
far right of it there should be a button to "View Macros." Left click
it.

7. A window should appear listing all the macros available. Most
likely you will only see one, the one I have sent you. It will be
called something like
ThisWorkbook.Create_Maryland_Lists_From_eBird_Data. Highlight it and
then click "Run."

6. Wait for the macro to finish and enjoy. You can tell that it is
running by looking at the status bar at the bottom of the screen.


Some additional information
1. Of course the workbook can only see the data you have in eBird. If
you don't have all your data in eBird expect yours totals to be low.
However, this is a great opportunity to see what data you have in
eBird and what you still have to enter.

2. The workbook does not count spuhs, slashes, hybrids, or domestics
in your totals. These are all italicized in the results so you can
clearly see what is not being counted. If you want to count a given
spuh you can simply change the box from 'x' to 1. Similarly,
subspecies are listed but only counted as the overall species.

3. If you have entered any exotics such as Nutmeg Mannikin or Monk
Parakeet, the workbook will count these in your totals so you will
have to manual subtract them.

4. Apart from Eastern Shore and Western Shore, the regions tab totals
should not be taken too seriously. These regions are not very
well-defined and don't respect county lines. As far as ES/WS, the
workbook attempts to make the border along the C&D Canal, but it is
based on the lat/lon of your eBird locations. If you have birded a lot
along the canal you may need to hand check sightings in that area to
see that they are being properly counted for your ES and WS lists.

Mike Ostrowski
North Bethesda


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