Birding News and Features

eBirder of the month -- Fabrice Schmitt

We are very pleased to introduce our latest eBirder of the Month, Fabrice Schmitt of Providencia, Chile. His dedication, hard work and contagious enthusiasm led to the creation of one of our most active eBird portals in the world, eBird Chile. Fabrice has also helped us build many partnerships in Chile and spearheaded the development of eBird in much of South America. We could easily go on for several paragraphs about how productive and fun it has been to work with Fabrice. But who better to introduce Fabrice to the wider eBird community than the author of Birds of Chile, Alvaro Jaramillo, who nominated Fabrice as our eBirder of the Month.

eBird gets a supercomputing kick from TeraGrid

Thanks to your continued participation the data analysis potential of eBird is growing rapidly. Through collaboration with partners in the DataONE network at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, eBird was recently awarded 100,000 hours of supercomputing time on the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid system. This powerful computer system will help Lab scientists and colleagues model bird migration phenology at the population level based on eBird data. The process will involve combining bird observations with remotely sensed variables such as landcover and greening index to predict bird movements and to explore how migration timing might change under different climate scenarios. This exciting story was recently profiled in Nature.

Take part in the BirdsEye Checklist Contest

Simply by entering checklists into the eBird online database birders have a chance to win an iPod touch® and a free download of the BirdsEye bird-finding application. BirdsEye is the revolutionary iPhone app that harnesses the power of eBird to help users find the birds they want to see. It's not a traditional field guide for identification. It does what a traditional field guide cannot do: guide users to the places where birders are seeing birds, using fresh eBird data that are frequently updated. BirdsEye has information about 857 species in North America, including eBird sightings, sounds from the Macaulay Library, photographs from VIREO, and birding-finding tips from Kenn Kaufman.

Improving your eBird reporting skills--Chickadees

At eBird, data quality is of paramount importance, and we put a lot of time and effort into building the data quality process. From developing better automated data filters, to growing and managing the network of much appreciated volunteer experts who help review data, we strive for a clean dataset. In some cases this process is straightforward. Rare birds are rare, and these will always be flagged for review. But what about the common species? When two similar species occur together regularly in a region we can't easily automate the data verification process. For example, Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees both occur in New Jersey, but there is only a small area of overlap. Which Chickadee do you see? Are you reporting the correct species from your backyard? Over the years we've discovered a few groups of common birds that are often misidentified. This article is the first in a series to help shed light on these frequently misidentified species groups.

Patterns from eBird -- Eastern Phoebe Migration

The previous “Patterns from eBird” featured animated maps of Northern Cardinal based on predictive modeling. This time we’ll take a look at how these maps predict migration in Eastern Phoebe, a widespread eastern species. Eastern Phoebe is the hardiest flycatcher in the United States and Canada, and in some areas it returns to the breeding grounds more than a month earlier than any other flycatcher. Its wintering range is largely within the United States, so these animated maps reveal its entire annual cycle.

New Gulf Coast Oil Spill Bird Tracker

eBird Global Now Beta-Testing

We're happy to announce that eBird is now officially available for data entry worldwide! In early June we quietly enabled global data entry, and so far we've gathered data on nearly 8000 species from 176 countries! Pull out your notes from past trips abroad and help us beta-test the new data entry functionality. We've also developed a new mapping tool that we call 'eBird Range Maps'. These maps show species' ranges worldwide, and we welcome your feedback on those. We're currently working with new partners to develop better checklists and data quality filters for countries around the world. Send us general feedback on how things are working (email us at ebird@cornell.edu). Are your lists correct? Was the checklist usable? Your comments will help us make things better as we move forward with this monumental task.