Exposing eBird Species Comments

How and why we plan to make species comments public

Imagine the following scenario. eBird provides an email alert for rare birds reported in your area. You get two emails about Cinnamon Hummingbirds (a super-rarity for the state) found at opposite ends of your home state, Arizona. One says "Cinnamon Hummingbird, 1, 25 October 2009, Grand Canyon NP--North Rim, no species comments" while the other says "Cinnamon Humingbird, 1, 25 October 2009, Ramsey Canyon Preserve, species comments: Seen well by 10 birders; photos at www.flickr.com/photos/CinHum; rather large hummingbird with bright rufous belly, tail. Greenish upperparts. Bright red bill with black tip. Regularly visiting feeder around cabins every 15 minutes." You are in between the two spots, but closer to the Grand Canyon one. You really want to see this hummingbird and today is your one chance. Which one do you go for? If it were up to us, we'd pick the one with documentation, photos, specific instructions on where to find it, and some sense for how reliable it is! 

Internet technology today makes it possible to "stream" eBird data in a number of ways. The eBird Notable Birds Gadget is an example of a data stream of rarities within eBird for a state. We hope soon to implement an email alert system that users can subscribe to, which would provide an email alert for for specific birds of interest that are reported. And we'd like to include species comments for the very reason mentioned above.

Specific locality information is very helpful when chasing rare birds. Imagine getting an email alert about an exciting rare bird discovery. Perhaps you are a Wyoming birder and an email comes in about a BLACK-TAILED GULL in Yellowstone National Park that was just reported to eBird. You are birding in Yellowstone and ready to go see it. The email includes the date, time, observer, state, county, and location. Location is "Yellowstone NP--Wyoming". Would you be able to find the bird in this massive National Park? Even if the location was "Yellowstone NP--Yellowstone Lake" you'd still have tens of miles of shoreline to check. In these cases, it is helpful to have species comments like "roosting with Ring-billed Gulls on a sandbar just north of the Rte. 20 bridge, just north of the Howard Eaton Rd. intersection."  (Although we encourage fine spatial resolution for data entry as often as possible, we do have some "broad-scale" hotspots available and these are often useful for entering old records or occasionally for long traveling counts that were not broken out more specifically.)

Other helpful comments could be comments on the age or plumage of the bird (i.e., knowing that a White-tailed Eagle in Maine is a juvenile versus an adult could make a big difference!), a specific grove of trees that it frequents, or that the bird was just a flyover in active migration.

Also, while the eBird review process helps our users to know if a bird has been correctly identified or not, sometimes the reviewers fall behind in the review task (they are allowed to go out birding too!). In these cases, it can be very helpful to document your identification right in the species comments. This is important both as documentation that will stay with the record in the future and to support your ID for people that may want to run out and see it.

There is much that can be done with the species comments to give our reviewers and others more information. We only ask that you begin to view these comments as public information along with your bird reports.

Things to think about

Whereas these comments have previously been easily accessible only to you, this new service will open them up to others. Please keep this in mind when you write you species comments.

Below are things we recommend including:

• Comments on the age, sex, or plumage of your birds
  
• Descriptions of rare birds
• Links to photos of birds (maybe on your Flickr site)
• More specific directions to interesting species (e.g., a specific pond or unit at a National Wildlife Refuge, particular hedgerow at a park, or anything that might help others share in your interesting bird sighting.

But you might want to be careful not to include other comments, such as:

• Personal attacks or comments that others might find offensive
  
• Profanity (of course, none of our eBirders would ever...)
• Directions to birds on private property or closed areas that you have access to

Initially, this exposition of the Species Comments will only be for records entered from about mid-November 2009 on. However, in the future there may be reasons for exposing past Species Comments as well. We'll be sure to give a heads up before we do this, but in general, it might be a good idea to do a little house cleaning on your species comments. An easy way to do this is to download your data in excel, sort by the species comments field, or search for offending phrases that you might have used. Then you can find that record in eBird and amend it.

Ways to make your eBird submissions most useful

As we gear up for this email alert, which should be an exciting new feature, we hope that eBirders continue to think about how their data can be most useful to science and conservation, as well as to other birders. Below are a few recommendations:

• Refined locations are better than broad-scale ones. The Black-tailed Gull example above is just one reason why.
  
• Effort-based counts, which must include time of day, are better than Casual observations
• Counts of birds are better than 'x'. Knowing that you are looking for 15 Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks, rather than just one, may make your search easier.
  
• Reporting all species is always best. We are using technological tools to identify the unusual species and feed those out, so don't worry that reports of common birds will "dilute" the "interesting" ones.
  

Using species comments for unusual species

Below are a few additional guidelines for how to use species comments to identify and document rarities. A general rule of thumb is that any record you are asked to "Confirm" during the data entry process would benefit from further description in the species comments. It is worthwhile to provide a brief description of the bird, links to photos, or at least a comment that you realize the record is unusual. If you drove an hour north to see a widely-reported rarity, you might include a note such as "widely seen", "Photographed by many people", or "first reported yesterday, I went up to confirm the sighting". These extra bits of information inform our reviewers that you identified the bird with care, and that you did not make a data entry error (which can occur all too easily). These details will expedite the review process and give eBird editors more to work with.

We have also recommended setting off the most noteworthy sightings with an asterisk, to help highlight them as unusual. A single asterisk can be used for sightings of minor note (a first local arrival, or a personal high count), a double asterisk for sightings that you know your regional editors will want to hear about, and a triple asterisk for anything rare enough to require review by your local records committee or otherwise extremely unusual. You might format it to specify why it is unusual, for example:

• *early
• *personal high count
• **first winter record for county
• ***first state record!

This will also help you locate unusual records and memorable sightings when you go back and look at your old records. It will also help those who download eBird data in excel form and search for unusual records. 

Thanks, and above all continue to have fun using eBird!

Team eBird,