What data are appropriate?

Your Personal Bird Records

eBird is most interested in your personal bird observations. Every time you raise your binoculars you are collecting valuable information on bird distribution and abundance.  When you tell us specifically how you went birding by associating effort information with your checklists, your data become that much more powerful for analyses. As birders we collect vast amounts of data on a daily basis.  From a daily walk in the park, to a guided bird workshop at a shorebird hotspot, just about any kind of birding event represents valuable data that should be captured in eBird.  

Data entry tips

• Bird at a specific location--eBird uses information based on the specific location where you were birding to associate the birds you report with habitat on the ground for analysis.  As such it is important that you understand the significance of being as precise as possible when plotting your location on the map.  Traveling counts should be limited to homogeneous habitats (e.g., creosote desert, short-grass prairie), and ideally not be longer than 5 miles. Exceptionally long counts are not as useful for rigorous analysis, nor are traveling counts that span a broad diversity of habitats. The idea is to link the birds you report with specific habitats (which we do through our mapping tool, remote sensing and GIS layers) and keep that in mind it's best to enter several checklists from more refined locations than it is to enter a single checklist for a very large area (e.g. Rocky Mountain National Park) or an exceptionally long traveling count (>5 miles in heterogeneous habitats). Read more about count types here.
  
• No more day lists!--The "day list" is something that is well-known and historically ingrained in the birding community.  It's pretty simple, you keep a single checklist for the day no matter how far you traveled, or how many places you've visited.  At eBird these kinds of checklists are only valuable for the simplest analyses conducted at the largest scales.  In order to make your data more meaningful you should keep individual checklists for each location visited throughout the day, and report the birds from each location to eBird separately.  We know, this sounds onerous--and in truth at times it can be.  But most of us don't bird 20 locations in a day, it's usually more like 2-5.  Once you get used to keeping more detailed notes you'll find that it's more rewarding personally as a birder, and your data then become of the highest possible value to eBird analysts.
• No more trip lists!--The "trip list" is something that is well-known to most birding tour participants.  While this is a good concept for listing purposes, we need more resolution for these data to be useful in eBird. eBird can only accept data from a specific date and location so trip lists must at least be broken out into single day counts.  Even then, to make the most of your tour, your effort and your data, recording birds at each stop on your trip provides the greatest resolution, satisfaction, and analytical utility for your data.
  

 

Data Entry Caveats

Multi-party Counts (e.g., Christmas Bird Counts)

eBird is designed to take data from single-party birding outings.  A single party can consist of any number of participants, as long as you are birding together as a group. So birding with friends is good, just remember to put the correct number of observers in that field on the data entry form.  Problems arise, however, when multi-party counts are aggregated into single checklists that cover very large areas.  A good example of this is when users enter Christmas Bird Count data.  It is not appropriate to enter the CBC totals for the entire count circle into eBird.  For starters those data are already gathered and maintained by Audubon, so there's no need for us to do it here, but more importantly it skews the eBird output toward these large multi-party counts, and gives an unrealistic representation of what one (or a single-party) might expect to find in a given day's birding in a region.  To add value to the CBC, you can

enter your single-party CBC counts into eBird.  By doing this you increase the resolution of the CBC data by making it spatially relevant, in the process making those data more appropriate for eBird. This process extends beyond CBCs and applies to all other multi-party counts.  Please enter the data into eBird in its complete richness, not in summary form, this way we get better information and so do you!

 

Historic Data

The value of entering historic data into the eBird database cannot be overstated. These records help build historic perspective in the database, and allow us to look farther back in time when conducting analyses.  Historic data entry does have a few caveats:

1. Data ownership--Any user can enter his or her old bird records into eBird by using their regular eBird account and simply changing the date on the data entry form to reflect the correct observation date.  The problem comes when interns, refuge staff, even individuals create new accounts and enter historic datasets from multiple observers, they themselves having not observed the species.  In these cases it's good to have as much supporting documentation available for the old records as possible, and be prepared to field questions from our regional editors about the validity of the data.  All eBird records are treated the same way, going through our data-vetting procedures, and historic data are no different.  As the person responsible for entering an historic dataset, be prepared to vouch for the dataset.
   
2. Valid Contact Information--Make sure that there is a valid email address associated with the entry of any historic dataset.
3. Effort Information--Make sure that if effort information is available with these old data, that it is entered along with the records.  The data will be more significant if there are effort data associated with the bird data.
4. Supporting Details--A real human being must be able to provide supporting details on questionable records entered into the database.  Read more about eBird Data Quality.
5. Date Spans--Often historic records contains spans of dates when a bird was present at a location (e.g., Streak-backed Oriole at Furnace Creek Ranch, CA, 6 November 1977 to 21 December 1977). In these cases it is appropriate only to report the bird to eBird on the dates when it was actually observed, not across the entire date span.  If this information in unavailable, just use the first and last dates of its stay.  Rarities are looked for and missed on many dates throughout their stays in a given area, and assuming a bird is present every day in unacceptable.