All,

The problem is that eBird is not only a scientific endeavour at this point.
Whether they intended it or not, eBird has become an even bigger tool for
the birders that submit to it and run it. Political boundary data in our
world is very important. I imagine that in the future ebird may become the
primary tool for record keeping. Furthermore, the project is intended to be
completely open. Most of the data gathered/generated is right there for
anyone to use, not just the ornithologists that work behind the scenes at
eBird. Ornithologists do sometimes use political boundaries when conducting
avian research. Geographic or habitat boundaries might not be feasible, and
you have to draw the line somewhere! Down the line, a paper considering
species abundance changes from a hyper-ebirded county might make a good
project. You may be right, that widespread double counting could
bias projects like the STEM maps or eBird's wide geographic abundance data
(the purple box maps). If this is your main concern, there are ways to get
around any bias created by entering double lists. For example, you could
enter your checklist as complete for one side of the boundary and then an
incidental (ie not complete) report on the other side. Frequency data is
only gathered for the complete checklists, and I believe the incidental
report would act as nothing more than a note that these species occurred at
that location at that specific time. Just a few of my thoughts on the
matter,

Jared Fisher
North Bethesda, MD

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Jim Nelson <>wrote:

> Chris,
>
> You are right about avoiding double counting.  I recall reading something
> on this issue that was either posted on eBird or sent to me in response to
> a question quite a while back.  I think the gist of it was that political
> boundaries don't really matter in the scientific use of data in eBird, so
> it doesn't matter to eBird that a count was conducted along a political
> boundary and includes birds seen on both sides of the boundary.  Accurately
> plotting the location of the count (whether traveling, area, or stationary)
> is important, and there is information in the eBird Frequently Asked
> Questions about doing that.  To make eBird attractive to us birders and
> entice us to submit data, the eBird folks generously organize our lists for
> us at the state and county level and include features like total ticks.
>  But when you plot a location, all the birds you report from that location
> will appear only in that state and county on your lists in eBird.  So your
> eBird lists can't reflect the same bird flying from one side to the other.
>  So eBird alone is not a total substitute for other systems of keeping your
> various state and county lists.
>
> Other eBirders may have thoughts on this.
>
> I hope this is helpful.
>
> Jim Nelson
> Bethesda
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Chris Tonra
> Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 10:45 AM
> To: 
> Subject: [MDOSPREY] eBird question- boundary birds
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I could ask the folks at eBird this, but figured the DC birding
> community deals with this issue as much as anyone.
>
> I'm wondering if anyone knows the protocol for recording birds that
> cross state/district boundaries. For instance, I had a Sharpie
> fly-over today which went from D.C. to MD. I figure I definitely
> shouldn't double count the bird, as the area is in the same "pixel",
> but is there a protocol for which side I record it on? I live right on
> the DC/MD boundary so am having this issue come up quite a bit.
>
> Thanks
>
> Chris Tonra
>
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