Updates to BirdsEye--hotspots and rare birds
BirdsEye improvements
BirdsEye version 1.2 was released in February and contains a major new feature: rare birds! A new "Notable sightings and rare birds" option means you can explore the most unusual sightings in your area in one of two ways:
The "Rare" option identifies the birds with ABA Code of 3 or higher
to identify the birds that are rare at the national level. You can see where these birds are on a map, who reported them, and even get driving directions directly from the application.
The "Notable" features works in a similar way, except that it identifies the birds that are locally rare and provides information on those. Every entry you make in eBird is compared to our list of expected species and counts for a location in a given month; when a bird is not expected to occur in that month at all, eBird considers it "Notable" and these sightings show up on the eBird Google Gadget
and on BirdsEye. Note that these two types of output show both approved and not approved records, whereas the hotspot lists show only approved records. this is because news of rare birds is time-sensitive, and the eBird review process takes some time.
BirdsEye version 1.0 was released in early December. On 9 January 2010 it was updated to version 1.1, with one major change that vastly improves its utility: it now displays data from personal locations too! Since many birds are discovered at publicly-accessible areas that are not eBird hotspots, this development is a big step forward and makes BirdsEye an essential tool for finding birds while in the field.
As you know, eBird has two types of locations: hotspots and personal locations. When you submit data on a map, the red balloons are the hotspots and the blue ones are the personal locations. Hotspots are generally publicly accessible, known locations that are good for birds. But the same is true of most personal locations too.
However, since personal locations may also be a backyard, BirdsEye has obscured these locations somewhat in the interest of privacy. When you access bird observations in BirdsEye, you can see all locations where birds have been reported recently, but the private locations are only plotted within the general vicinity (~0.5 mi) of the actual location, not the exact spot. In addition, the location names are numerical so that people's home addresses don't appear.
This results in much much more information available in BirdsEye and is still really helpful for getting observers to birds that they want to see. Even with obscured locations, BirdsEye is often steering you to habitat or general areas that are good bets for the bird. We just ask, as always, that you be mindful of private property when letting BirdsEye steer you to private locations. These may or may not be publicly accessible and we trust users to be respectful at all times.
About BirdsEye
BirdsEye is the first iPhone app to harness the eBird database as a source for birdfinding information. Within the application, you can select any of the following options:
1) Find nearby birds: This pulls up a list of all the birds reported to eBird in the general area (within about 30 miles) within the past 3 years. You can further filter this list to show only the recently-reported species (within the past 30 days). From either menu, you can click on the species to see the 20 locations with recent reports and how long ago they were reported. You can also click to see the complete list of birds for the location and can even get directions directly from the app.
2) Locate a bird: This allows a user to select any bird from a list of 847 possibilities in North America. Clicking on the bird name will give you the 20 nearest observations, which you can access both on a map (and get directions) or as a list, and of course you can get directions from your current location to the bird.
3) View birding hotspots: This option shows you the nearest hotspots to your current location, how far away they are, and how many species have been seen there. Clicking on the hotspot gives a full list of the birds observed there over the past 3 years and when the most recent report was. You can also filter this list to only show birds seen in the last 30 days. And of course, you can get directions from your current location to the hotspot.
4) Content: For any species, you have access to a selection of one or more photos from VIREO, songs and calls from The Library of Natural Sounds, and bird-finding tips from Kenn Kaufman written specifically for BirdsEye.
5) Life list: You can record your life list in BirdsEye as well. Currently this is not integrated with eBird, but we hope it will be in the future. This can be used to help you quickly discover nearby birds that have been reported that you have not seen.
6) Change your location: It is easy to change your location, so that you can check birds near Washington D.C. one minute and look for what is being seen near Los Angeles the next!
If you do try it, we urge you to write a review at the App Store.
Team eBird's review
Team eBird all has iPhones and are all BirdsEye users. We love it! It is a really simple, user-friendly way to access up to date eBird information from the field. With concern for privacy, the BirdsEye team has done a great job delivering the information that is most useful to birders, whether landing at an airport for a birding trip far from home or just keeping up on what reports are coming in locally.
It also allows really cool things like: 1) quickly see the complete list of birds for a hotspot; 2) quickly see which hotspots in an area have the most data and which have the least (we like to go birding at the ones that have the least!); 3) quickly find out where the closest Ivory Gull is (this is a fun quiz to have with your birding friends...where is the closest Great Gray Owl...Northern Hawk Owl...Curlew Sandpiper...etc. 4) photos and audio at your fingertips for hundreds of birds. And of course, the new rare and notable birds features are fantastic!
Overall, it is a great application that harnesses eBird data in new ways. We look forward to future developments, and obviously, the piece that we really really want is for it to be updated to allow data entry from the field. This will be one of the next elements to come down the pike at BirdsEye, so stay tuned.
In the name of full disclosure, we should say that Team eBird did consult with the BirdsEye team during development of the application. So we may have a bit of a bias here. Even still, we think it is great and urge you to give it a try; it revolutionizes the information available through a smart phone. It has already changed the way we go birding and how we get birding info from the field.
More information:
The application was developed by Birds in the Hand, LLC, of Virginia, and brings together content from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and Kenn Kaufman.
- BirdsEye: www.getbirdseye.com
- iTunes App Store:
