Any regular follows of this blog will know that I use Ebird as my bird recording system. Dom Mitchell wrote a somewhat controversial article in Birdwatch/Birdguides recently HERE where he advocated the replacement of notebooks with the Ebird app. I might even go a bit further than that and will predict that Ebird will not only replace notebooks but also will replace bird reports, county recorders, bird clubs, rarities committees and every other traditional birding recording, validation and reporting platform eventually.
At Beddington Farmlands we've attempted to completely make the transition to Ebird with observers using the app to populate our hotspot with data, photos and sound recordings and we've also been uploading archived data to create a 'live' avifauna of the site. Although it's still a work in progress here are the results:
Beddington Farmlands Location and Introduction: HOTSPOT MAP
The Beddington Farmlands avifauna (on line bird history of the site) ILLUSTRATED CHECKLIST and PRINTABLE CHECKLIST
2020 Live Bird Report: 2020 BAR CHARTS (any year can be selected by changing the date range)
Example of Species account: GREEN SANDPIPER 2020 DATA (any species can be selected and analysed in multiple ways by clicking on graph icon next to each species on the bar chart)
Example of species records in comparison to surrounding hotspots: ARCTIC SKUA (if you zoom out of this map it looks like there was only two other inland records on Arctic Skua in England in 2020- in Staines and Cambridge)
Photos for 2020 at Beddington Farmlands BEDDINGTON FARMLANDS MEDIA
Sound recordings for 2020 at Beddington Farmlands BEDDINGTON FARMLANDS SOUND MEDIA
Example of a daily recording sheet APRIL 18th 2020 EBIRD
Basically, Ebird is absolutely amazing and thrusts birding into the digital, global and interconnected future. Each local patch and all local data is effectively integrated into a global recording system which maps global bird distribution and migration in real time. It's a global revolution and within the next ten or twenty years it will absorb rarity committees (national and county), reports and records centres.
To make sure we move into the future but not lose great traditions we will still produce a hard copy bird report at Beddington but a concise version which supports the Beddington Farmlands Ebird. Example of our transition with our 2019 report HERE (on ResearchGate- another open source global network for scientific research). All this new technology really is absolutely amazing!!
Check out the Azores Ebird, planning on integrating our reports here too. AZORES EBIRD. This is a really important function where recording areas can be constructed and individual records can be analysed across collections of hotspots (e.g. no reason a county can't adopt one of these recording areas). Will also be building our Bulgaria and Ghana projects on Ebird and also use it for all birding trips, home and away- the benefit of a global/ universal system.
5 comments:
Pete I totally agree. I use eBird all the time and in preference to Wildlife Recorder. BUT eBird needs to adopt the Vice County recording boundaries which are used by the Natural History Museum etc. Thets the only fault I can find with this revolutionary system!
I am one of those philistines on twitter Peter but your post here is selling it well.... You could post tips on how people like me should get started?
Agree, needs to support the historical recording archive (e.g. vice county boundaries)and also needs finer grained validation too, would be good if our bird group could manage the Beddington Farmlands hotspot but if we work more closely with the county validators that will be okay too (but more work for the poor county validators)
Hi Stewart, first thing is to open an account and download the app on your phone. Then just go birding using the app. The app tracks your route and time and you can either enter a full species of birds seen/heard or just selected sightings (e.g. highlights). Then once you've got a few records submitted you can explore the data- will tell you how many species you've seen this year, in what county or also life list (if you put all the data in- which can be transferred quite easily from other systems- Kevin Guest (commented above)) moved all his records in spreadsheets from Wildlife Recorder over to Ebird quite painlessly I understand). I'm mainly interested in Ebird from a Patch/Recording Area perspective but it's main attraction is to personal listers and birders keeping track of their patch, county, country and world lists etc.
The system is very intuitive and great to explore (you keep finding even more exciting functions) so basically download the app and go birding :-)
Great stuff thanks Peter. Since my comments I have had a go on my PC uploading patch stuff. Id like to get a full patch history on there but it will take some time. Now for the app. Our signal isnt too hot here but I'll have a go. Thanks again...
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