eBird Tutorial

Overview

Submitting observations to eBird is a simple process. But there are a few things that you can provide to make your observations more valuable to science, and in the long-run for yourself. To make your contribution as scientifically useful as possible, we need to know:

• Where you were birding
  
• How you were birding (e.g, what kind of birding you were doing)
  
• What species you saw or heard
  
• How many individuals of each species were recorded

Most of these things represent information typically gathered by birders over the course of their birding events. Counting birds may be a new skill for some birders, but in most cases it is relatively easy and provides much more information than simply knowing that a given species was present. Keeping track of the effort you expended birding is simple. Examples of this are the time you spent observing birds, or how much distance or area you covered while doing so. Recording these bits of information help analysts use your data to its fullest extent.

Creating an eBird Account

In order to submit observations you will need first to register by creating an eBird account. You can then use your username and password to sign in to eBird from any computer in the world, as long as it’s connected to the Internet.

Registering for eBird

To create a new account, click on the “Register As A New User” link on the home page. You’ll be asked to create a Username, Password, and to supply an email address (used to verify reports of rare birds). When you click the “Register” button you will be asked a few optional demographic questions – these are entirely for internal use, and you can choose to skip these by clicking on the 'Skip this' link on each page. View the privacy statement for more information.

Forgot your password?

If you have an account but cannot remember the username or password, use the links provided on the sign in page to receive an email containing this information. We’ll automatically send a reminder to the email address you used to register. If your email address has changed since you originally created your account, send us an email asking for this information.

Submitting a Checklist of Birds

An important distinction between eBird and many other types of bird records systems is eBird's emphasis on recording complete checklists of birds. While we can take records of single birds at a place and time, we make it easy for you to tell about ALL the birds that were present by providing you with a checklist to fill out that is specifically tailored to where and when you were birding. By submitting complete checklists of birds you are telling us not only about what birds you saw, but also about what birds you missed, which allows us to create better range maps and helps provide important baseline data for common birds as well as rarities. To get started log in and click the main tab at the top of the home page called "Submit Observations"

Where did you bird?

The first step in the eBird data entry process is simply telling us specifically where you were birding. It is best to be as accurate as possible. Bird checklists from refined geographic locations are best (e.g., Your Yard, a park, or a local birding hotspot), but we can collect data at the county and state (not recommended) levels. There are a suite of tools that help you tell eBird where you were birding.

• Select from my locations - The drop-down menu only appears after you have created your first eBird location. All locations that you choose, or create will be maintained in this list for easy access later so that you don't have to recreate the location mapping process for places you bird often.
• Find it on a map - Allows you to select from existing birding locations on a "Google Map", and also allows you to create new locations by simply clicking on the map and then naming your new location. Zoom in as far as possible before creating your new location to ensure accuracy.
• Use latitude and longitude - Allows you to input coordinates from your birding locations in either decimal degrees, or degrees, minutes, seconds. GPS is a great way to pinpoint exactly where you were birding!
• Select an entire city, county or state - If you were birding over a very large area (entire state or county or city) select this option. Please consider using more precise locations so that your observations are more valuable for analysis. These should be used a last resort, and are popular for entry of historic data.
• Import data - allows you to import data from existing databases in spreadsheet format. Read more about what formats we accept here.
  

How did you bird! What kind of birding did you do?

This section of the data entry process enables you to attach some measure of effort to the bird observations you are about to submit. Important things to consider here are date, what kind of birding that you did, how long you spent birding, when you were birding, and how many observers were with you.

The first important step is categorizing your birding event into one of the following four types:

• Traveling Count - Observations made while birding over a specified distance (preferably <5 mi) and duration. Examples include most general field birding, walking a trail or driving a refuge loop.
• Stationary Count - Observations made from a specific location (moving <30 meters) and duration. Examples include hawkwatching, seawatching or watching birds from your window.
• Area Count - Observations made from a specified area and duration, often when covering the same ground repeatedly. Examples include a thorough survey of your yard or local park.
• Casual Observation - Incidental observations made when birding was not your primary purpose. Examples include a fly-over Osprey seen while driving to work or noting a few birds while gardening.

Date is self explanatory, with a few caveats. eBird can only accept observations from a single day. Two-day or week long counts cannot be considered, so please break out your birding into day long events (the smaller the time frame the better). You can change the date back to 1900 for year if you are entering historic data or past field notes.

What did you see/hear? The fun part!

This is the eBird checklist page where you can enter the numbers for each species you saw and/or heard. After you've told eBird the date and location, it automatically pulls up a checklist of birds that are most likely to be seen in the area on the date you provided. From here you can quickly navigate the list and put in the numbers for each species. The eBird checklist shows you the 'Most probable' view first, and if you have seen a rare bird then you'll have to click on the 'Rare species' link to see the rest of the options for that date and location. If you still can't find your bird then you can type it into the 'Add a species' field on the checklist page.

There are a few questions at the top of the checklist page that are important. The first one is: Are you submitting a complete checklist of the birds you saw/heard?  It is critical that you understand this question and answer it correctly. We want to find out whether you are reporting all the birds you were able to identify to the best of your ability. In other words, answer "Yes" to this question when you submit more than just the highlights of your birding event, and try to note every species present. We realize that all birds are not identifiable and user abilities vary. You should always answer "Yes" to this question unless you are purposefully excluding some species (e.g. European Starlings) from your checklist. You do not need to count all the individuals to answer "Yes" to this question. Please try to report all species.

The second question is: Do you want to report age/sex or add species comments? When you answer "Yes" to this question, an additional page is inserted into the checklist process that allows you to provide age and sex information for each species, and provides a place to add text comments on each species you've seen or heard.

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Checklist Order - eBird checklists can presented in two ways, Taxonomic Order or Alphabetic Order. Learning taxonomic order has many benefits, but you should use the order with which you are most comfortable.

Using the "Jump to species" option - At the top of the checklist page you'll find the "Jump to species" window. Here you can start to type in the name of the bird you want to report. The "Jump to species" feature then searches the checklist for a match. Click your 'enter' key to go directly to the matched species and your cursor automatically ends up in that species box. Enter the number you saw. To quickly return the to "Jump to species" box click the up arrow. Your cursor will automatically return to the box where you can begin typing in the next species. This can be useful when entering field notes where the birds are not in a particular order.

The confirmation page

After you’ve entered all of the information on the checklist, click “Continue” to see a summary of your checklist. If anything is incorrect, you can go back and fix it by using the “Back” button provided on the screen.

Once the checklist looks OK, click “Submit.” Your observations are now part of eBird, and are immediately available using the My eBird and View and Explore Data features.

Hooray! You just submitted your first checklist to eBird. Repeat ad infinitum!

Confirming Unusual Entries