eBird Reviewer Spotlight: Lukas Sobotta

Did you know there are over 2,000 volunteer eBird reviewers around the world? Volunteer reviewers play an important role ensuring the eBird database remains reliable and accurate for science and conservation (learn more about the eBird review process). eBird is incredibly grateful to our volunteer reviewers for their dedication to eBird’s data quality.

The eBird Reviewer Spotlight helps you get to know eBird’s volunteer reviewers a little better. These articles are written in the reviewer’s own words and reflect their experiences as reviewers, eBirders, and members of the birding community. In this spotlight, Lukas Sobotta, eBird regional reviewer for Germany, describes how he became interested in birds, his experiences as an eBird reviewer, and how he contributes to the German birding community.

Introduce yourself and provide a brief background. How did you get into birding?

My name is Lukas Sobotta, I was born in southern Poland and moved to Germany when I was age of 5. I started to watch, count and love birds quite late. I did not study biology, as a “usual” first step becoming a birder. Instead, I became an electrical engineer and wasn’t interested in birds at all – till I met my wife 15 years ago. She brought in some basic bird knowledge and made fun of me that I couldn’t distinguish a Blackbird from a Great Tit (it wasn’t this bad – but almost ). So she bought us a bird guiding book and we started a competition: who can identify certain birds out of the book first gets a badge next to the birds page. Hers were pink, mine were blue – and I recognized that the book gets filled with blue badges pretty fast.  But I saw also that there were some birds with no badges at all. These birds caught my interest – why haven’t we spotted them yet and where do we have to go to see them? So our field trips became more large-scale and the destinations more well-chosen – just to spot a certain bird. That were the first steps into twitching – soon we changed the book from German to Europe and later to world scale. And here I am now, trying to get as many blue badges into my “birds of the world” book as possible.

How did you become an eBird hotspot reviewer?

In Germany, we have “our own” bird reporting platform called “Ornitho.de”. It fulfills a quite similar purpose to eBird, with a few differences in scope and application. This platform is limited to Germany only. So, if you want to travel the world and twitch birds you’ll end up at eBird sooner or later. I did so, but noticed that Germany then left as a blank space on my eBird map – because I reported all German observations on Ornitho. So I was trying to find a way to export my Ornitho submissions and import them into eBird, to have both pages in parallel. It took me some time to figure out how to do it – and I found an awesome but fairly unknown web tool for transferring data from one platform to another programmed by Raphaël Nussbaumer.  I did a tutorial on using the tool on YouTube and shared the video to many, many people who were in the same position as I have been. My effort caught the attention of the German review team and I was invited to become part of the German review team. 

What work do you do as a reviewer? What is the difference between a hotspot reviewer and a general eBird reviewer? 

In my role within the German review team I am responsible for both, creating and maintaining hotspots in all of Germany and to do the review work for all submissions in Germany.  Germany consists of 16 federal states and every one of the German review team is a little bit specialized in the part of the country that is most familiar to him or her – but also cordially invited to support and help for the rest of the country, if the case is quite obvious. For the creation of hotspots, it is definitely more beneficial to know the local conditions and surroundings of a birding place. This makes it easier to evaluate if the place is suitable for becoming an eBird hotspot. Here, we as a team did a bit of division of labor and every hotspot reviewer maintains the part of the country he knows best.

That is the biggest difference between a hotspot reviewer and a general eBird reviewer: you need more knowledge of the location to better assess if a certain location meets all criteria for becoming a hotspot.

Why are hotspots such important features in eBird? What criteria do you look for in deciding whether or not to elevate a location to hotspot status? 

Hotspots are an important feature of eBird. They indicate true hot spots of avian- and biodiversity. eBirds hotspot map is an excellent feature to show the distribution of bird species using a “cold-to-hot” color scheme. Dark red (or “hot”) areas indicate a high number of bird species while blue and grey (cold) areas show less species – or spots that need to be visited to get a better overview.

On a country scale hotspots are important to collect checklists of a certain location – to see how big the biodiversity is in a certain area. Imagine a communal park in a large town that is briefly visited by numerous birders. One birder counts 20 species, a different birder counts 10 different species. And the next birder counts 10 species that are already on the others list – but also 5 new species. How great would it be to consolidate those lists to get an overall picture? And that is exactly where the hotspot idea comes into play. All submissions for a certain area are merged into one hotspot. And instantly you get the “big picture”, what’s going on in your local park, what kind of birds are there, when they are present. That helps us to understand the importance of such areas – and to tell, if there are sufficient environmental protection measures in place.

There are certain rules for a hotspot given by eBird. Those rules are important to maintain the quality of hotspots. A hotspot shouldn’t be too small nor too big and the boundaries should be clearly visible. Like the edge of a forest or the shoe area of a lake.

If many contributors start to report birds individually at a certain location, we need to check if this place is suitable as a hotspot.

Can you explain the different ways that locations become hotspots? Are they suggested by users or created by hotspot reviewers?

Sometimes, unexpected areas suddenly get visited by many, many birders because local birdwatchers found a new, interesting spot for breeding birds or a good bird migration stopover location. When I as a hotspot reviewer see that a certain area is gathering more and more individual checklists I check, if the location is suitable for a hotspot. If all criteria are met and it is foreseeable that this location stays in the attention of birdwatchers, I create a hotspot and ask all contributors if they are willing to merge their observation to it.

Of course, we are also reliant on the contribution of eBird users. Often it is beyond our attention, if spots are becoming more “famous” in the birder community. But luckily there are many dedicated birdwatchers out there, inviting and helping us to discover “their” hotspots. Sometimes, a location becomes more and more frequently visited by more and more birdwatchers and the originator of this spot is happy to share “his” place with the community. So the spot can be suggested as a hotspot. That is a fantastic way to contribute and share great and maybe even unknown birding places with the community. If all criteria are met, we reviewers turn this personal location into a eBird hotspot.

What challenges are associated with your work as a hotspot reviewer?

It is not always easy to find the right balance between creating and promoting a new birding spot as hotspot or keep it as personal hotspot to reduce the impact of disturbance for breeding birds by birders. Of course, it is everybody’s responsibility to go birding in the most ethical way and to ensure the well-being of the birds is the top priority. But nevertheless, there is always a little impact on the behavior of birds when we are visiting their surroundings and watch them. Creating a “public” hotspot always attracts more birders. On the other hand, it is always great to share the joy of going birdwatching and everybody’s keen find new, exciting places to watch birds.

What can eBirders do to help the review process?

I think most errors and misidentifications happen when birders observe “tricky” birds such as gulls, waders or warblers and are not familiar with their distribution. Sometimes, far away from home, they expect to see similar species to what they are used to. But of course, surprises always happen and all of the sudden there’s a bird that nobody expected. In this case, aware of the status of rarity, the best way to provide a good documentation is of course taking pictures. Unfortunately, this is rarely possible or sometimes just not feasible. Here comes a good, written description into play. The worst thing an observer can do is copy the description text out of the guidebook. Because it is not about describing the species but about describing the bird in front of one. Therefore, a good field note describes the overall giss, color, behavior and all recognized, distinctive features of the seen bird.

What is your favorite part of the review process?

Sometimes, when I contact an observer during the review process and write to him or her, that there might be a misidentification on the checklist I am very surprised how thankful and friendly people are for receiving this feedback. Of course, the tone of our review emails is always friendly and constructive but sometimes it’s hard not to seem like a know-it-all. And very few people find it easy to have their small mistakes pointed out. Surprisingly, the feedback I receive is always very friendly, thankful and happy for the correction. This confirms my efforts to strike the right tone and help birders to become even better and more mindful.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Birds unite us in our interests, in our fascination and in our devotion. No matter where in the world I have been and was able to watch birds, I have met like-minded people who share the same values and enjoy the same birds – regardless of ethnicity, origin or social status. Birds have no boundaries and overcome man-made obstacles without any problems. We should follow their example. We should unite our efforts across all boundaries and obstacles to make this world worth living in for us and our descendants – so that we can all enjoy the same treasures of nature together.

Lukas shared that “Exploring the surroundings of you hometown can be as exiting as traveling the world to see birds.”