Does your favorite hotspot have data from every week of the year? Tell us about it!
Recently, the number of eBird hotspots has increased greatly. Each Central American country now has over 100 hotspots registered in eBird. For each of those birding destinations, eBird updates the weekly bird lists (bar charts) and birding activity pages, once a day or even more often. These pages are easily found via the eBird hotspot explorer tool (get there from the Explore Data menu). The eBird portal team for Central America would like to know when any of these hotspots has obtained data from every week of the year, what we call “completing its bar chart”.
We realize that bar charts are not really complete with just one or a few checklists for each week; it may take dozens of checklists per week before all species regularly present have been recorded. Nonetheless, we wish to announce this first level of “completion” on the eBird Portal, which in turn will help other birders know more about the hotspot.
Completing the eBird hotspot bar charts is a great way to contribute to science, and to help other birders understand the patterns of local and long-distance migrations at each eBird hotspot. Furthermore, having abundance (count and effort) data for a location year-round will contribute nicely to bird monitoring efforts; and land managers for the conservation areas or parks where the hotspots are located will be grateful for the information they need to assure they are completing their conservation goals.
An example of an eBird hotspot with a complete bar chart (data from all weeks) is Pipeline Road (Camino del Oleoducto), in Colón, Panama (this spot has data from all weeks, 438 species reported, and 743 checklists). This site has long been considered a prime birding destination in Panama. It is close to the capital city, flanking the east bank of the Panama Canal within the Soberanía National Park. It is a great place to see rainforest birds such as Spotted Antbird (Hylophylax naevioides), Purple-throated Fruitcrow (Querula purpurata), and Song Wren (Cyphorhinus phaeocephalus). With luck you may get a photograph of a Blue Cotinga (Cotinga nattererii), such as during this recent visit by Alex Wang.
The last empty week for data at Pipeline Road was filled during 2013; 418 species had been reported to eBird by the end of that year. But 20 more species were reported by eBirders during 2014, and clearly eBirders will continue to add new species to the eBird checklist for this bird-rich site located in tropical rainforest. Almost 10% of the last 100 checklists reported from this hotspot reported more than 100 species during a visit of several hours, demonstrating how rich the birding can be (this information is available from the Hotspot Explorer tool in eBird). The two principal contributors of data for this hotspot have been Kent Livezey (55 complete checklists) and Jan Cubilla (34 complete checklists), as of this writing. Great work, Kent and Jan!
As of this announcement, we know of few Central American hotspots with complete or nearly complete bar charts, i.e. with data for every week of the year. Here are a few more examples that we could find:
Panama Rainforest Discovery Center, Colón, Panama (all weeks with data, 344 species, 307 checklists)
Zamorano University campus, Francisco Morazán, Honduras (all weeks with data, 256 species, 536 checklists)
Laguna Villa Royal, Francisco Morazán, Honduras (all weeks with data, 185 species, 143 checklists)
Carara National Park, Puntarenas, Costa Rica (1 week of data missing, 507 species, 496 checklists)
La Selva Biological Station, Heredia, Costa Rica (2 weeks of data missing, 523 species, 1446 checklists)
Rancho Naturalista, Cartago, Costa Rica (2 weeks of data missing, 498 species, 895 checklists)
Tikal National Park, Petén, Guatemala (5 weeks of data missing, 331 species, 298 checklists)
If you notice that one of your favorite hotspots has data for every week of the year in its bar chart, please let us know. We can work with you to make an announcement for the portal. Send a message to eBird by using the Contact option found at the bottom of most pages on eBird, and write in the subject line, “message for the Central American eBird team”.
The network of registered eBird hotspots in Central America is expanding quickly, so we also encourage eBird users to contribute observations at popular birding locations to the shared hotspot locations, rather than creating personal locations. If you enter data for a birding area not yet recognized as a hotspot, you can propose the site to be one (here’s how).
If you notice that a hotspot now exists where you previously contributed data via a personal location, you can merge your list(s) with the hotspot. This can be done through the “Manage my locations” page (accessed from the My eBird tab). Instructions are available here.