Australia

According to eBird, of all the ways to count birds, ‘incidental observations’ are the least valuable in terms of analysis. Furthermore, in How to Make Your Checklists More Valuable, eBird states ‘the importance of using Incidental Observations only as a last resort cannot be over overstated’. Incidental Observations are used primarily for bird observations made when birding was not your primary purpose.

You may already have worked out that incidental observations are recorded differently in eBird such as that they are not recorded as a checklist.

So how do we get around this and add more value to our observations? The most obvious way is to spend some time recording all the birds in the location, rather than just the Black Falcon that flew over you. By spending that time, you can answer ‘yes’ to the important question, ‘was birding your primary purpose?’ If you can answer yes, then record your observations as a ‘stationary count’.

This begs the question, what is the minimum amount of time required for a stationary count and one recently discussed on the international eBird reviewers forum. One of the more considered responses was:

‘…a 5-minute stationary count will often include a very large proportion of the species regularly frequenting that location. I will also note that the standard source of information on status of North American birds, the North American Breeding Bird Survey, is based on 3-minute counts, so that is ample evidence in my eyes that complete stationary counts shorter than 5 minutes in duration are also a rich and valuable source of information.’

So our advice is, next time you are tempted to submit an incidental observation of a single species, consider spending a minimum of three minutes observing and also counting all the other birds in that location. Then rather than an incidental observation, you have a stationary count.

contributed by Alistair Smith, ACT eBird reviewer