Welcome to Wisconsin eBird

Birding News and Features

eBird Express: New Excel tool to simplify data upload

June 08, 2009

We’re excited to announce a new tool for submitting your checklists to eBird. Jay Packer, one of our industrious eBird users created a tool to help upload checklists from Microsoft Excel--a tool that he’s appropriately named eBird Express. By writing code into an Excel template, Jay provides multiple levels of error-checking that will help you avoid any complications when uploading data to eBird. NOTE: If you are not familiar with Excel, this tool may not help you much. If you do use Excel, this tool helps to allow your bulk uploads to swiftly and easily upload to eBird without a hitch.

eBird Enters the Blogosphere!

May 30, 2009

A lot happens from day to day at eBird, and we want to share it with you. We've created a blog to enhance our ability to connect with our users, to address issues that arise from time to time, and to harness the power of the eBird community to better define the future direction of the project. Through the “Chip Notes – eBird Buzz” blog we hope to create an on-going dialogue with our users. We want to get to know you better, learn what you like about eBird and what you think needs improvement. We want to know why you use eBird, and we want to engage those who don’t to tell us why! We want to let you speak your minds about how we’re doing in providing this service to the birding community. Through collaboration, we’ll keep eBird evolving in the direction that best suits the needs of the birding community, all while keeping our internal focus on collecting valuable scientific data. We look forward to hearing from you!

What in the world is "Herring Gull (American)"?

May 24, 2009

Most species names in eBird are easily found with a glance at your field guide, but eBird also allows entry of a number of other birds (sometimes we call them 'taxa') whose names do not appear in any guides. These break down into three main groups: hybrids, spuhs, and subspecies groups. Hybrids all have the word "hybrid" in the name (e.g., Mallard x Gadwall (hybrid)) and all spuhs either have a "sp." (e.g., scoter sp.) or slash (e.g., Greater/Lesser Scaup) in the name. The subspecies groups, such as "Herring Gull (American)", are more complicated and explained in this article.

The trouble with 'X' - Why you should always estimate numbers!

April 15, 2009

Over the years at eBird we have always been flexible about allowing users to report either numbers for each species, or to provide an 'X' to indicate presence. In our latest round of analysis, however, we found that checklists where users estimated numbers for ALL species encountered were of significantly higher conservation value when compared with those that contain 'Xs', or even a single 'X' mixed in with numbers. In this piece we'll talk about why recording numbers is important, as well as provide some guidance as to how to estimate numbers in difficult situations. Read more about why making your best estimate of numbers always trumps the dreaded 'X'!

New Feature: eBird Top 100!

April 03, 2009

We're proud to introduce a new feature at eBird called the "eBird Top 100." Using this new tool found under the "View and Explore Data" tab, you can now see your position in relation to other eBird users in a variety of geographic regions including ABA area, country, state and county. We offer two different rankings: the total number of species reported, or the total number of complete checklists submitted. Our users have asked for a tool like this so that they can see where they stand in relation to other birders in their region of interest. We hope this new tool will inspire healthy competition among eBirders, and increase the amount of checklists submitted by inspiring birders to get out and collect more new data, as well as promote the entry of historic records. Click on "View and Explore Data" to find out how you rank among the best eBirders in the country!