It’s time to talk about one of my favorite things-- eBird. Birders reading this are likely already eBird and Merlin users. But for those who don’t really consider themselves birders and just fall under the “sure, I like birds” category, I can’t recommend these two tools/apps enough. eBird is a free mobile and web app developed by Cornell Lab of Ornithology which enables users to quickly record bird observations as checklists. I can say with certainty that eBird is what turned me INTO a birder and what makes me a better birder every year.
So how exactly did that happen? I originally wanted a better way to keep track of species I was recording for our habitat and was seriously tired of hand writing lists and loading them into an excel sheet. At the time, I was only recording my first encounters with each species each season and sometimes the last date I encountered them for the year. This is nice info, but in a spreadsheet form, it’s not very interesting and frankly doesn’t tell you much…and there’s nothing like working in a spreadsheet to turn whatever fun you had collecting the info into absolute joyless, tedious misery.
First and foremost, eBird makes collecting the data simple. It wasn’t long before I was entering checklists with glee each time something new popped up in the yard. But then something happened…I realized that because it was soooo easy, maybe if I collected just a little bit more, I could begin to see true patterns for all the species that visit—which made me want to be more consistent. So, I started entering complete checklists (meaning, you catalog and count every bird species seen/present for whatever time period you observed, whether it’s 5 mins or 5hrs).
After I got the hang of that, I wanted even MORE data—as in, I wanted observations recorded every single day (sometimes multiple times a day) so I could get a sense of just how many birds were visiting the habitat (or could be expected to be here) for any given time of year. With eBird, I could easily download this data or view it as monthly bar charts for each species—specific to my exact location—which was pretty incredible. Suffice it to say I was hooked.
While most birders think of eBird as their tool for when they’re “going birding”, the data collected by those observing birds at their residence/yard is considered some of the most desirable and valuable data for eBird to collect, since it’s from a specific defined small area and collected by the same observer over a long period of time. The consistency of observations and extensive time range for a location gives eBird tremendous amounts of information regarding species density and abundance, migration timing, ranges, and habitat composition. They target complete checklists collected from yards and “patches” like these to build amazing reports and animations for species range, abundance and migration maps. Of course when I first started doing my checklists, I didn’t know any of this at the time and thought that counts & checklists from a tiny site like mine would be of little interest—but the reality is quite the opposite.
In Dec 2022, I received an email from Team eBird which notified me that my observation data was selected to contribute to their Status and Trends project, and they ingested my data for 218 species—which represented over 10% of the total species studied for the project!
An eBird animation showing migration pattern and abundance of the Baltimore Oriole for every week of the year
That was a real turning point for me—because it really wasn’t until that moment that I realized that my checklists and observations mattered—they have real tangible value, and I could see the result of those checklists in the migration animations and trend maps. These maps give the clearest, most detailed and accurate view into what is truly happening in regard to our bird populations. Every bit of information you can collect gives a voice to birds.
Simply put—the observations you make in eBird directly contribute to our knowledge of birds and provide critical information for identifying species and habitats needing conservation. If that’s not a reason to take up eBird, I don’t know what is! It's true citizen science—and I’m extremely proud to be part of it. You can check out some of these incredible visualizations from the Status and Trends at science.ebird.org
Now, you might think, “I don’t have many birds” or “I see the same ones all the time”, so wonder how could your observation could possibly be of value—but it very much is! Even when you don’t see any birds or don’t have much to report—that’s still important data. The absence of something is just as critical to show & include in data as the presence of something, because it can point to trends indicating species decline. If you counted an average of 24 Northern Cardinals in your yard every January for the last 5 years, but then you counted only 8 in January this year, and maybe 10 the next and 6 the year after, that absolutely tells us something is going on which is causing that area’s population of birds to crash.
There is also something that happens when you commit to using a tool like eBird—you get more attentive. You start seeing more species because you’re actively looking more—and realize you have more birds around than you thought. Once you add binoculars, you’ll understand something else: the birds you think you’re seeing aren’t always what you thought!
If you glanced out a window and saw a bunch of White-throated Sparrows and House Sparrows on the ground, you’re likely to assume all those sparrows are one of those two species. A closer look with binoculars might tell you that in actuality there were 35 birds in total—and along with the sparrows mentioned above, there were actually 9 House Finches, 2 Song Sparrows and 1 Chipping sparrow mixed in. That’s a big difference in the variety of species compared to your assumption, and also means you misidentified over 25% of the birds when doing just a quick glance.
When I saw the wayward Dickcissel here in February a few years ago, I nearly made the exact mistake mentioned above. It was a snowy year and we had hundreds of sparrows here. Glancing outside, it looked like the typical daily mix of House Sparrows and White-throated sparrows feeding on seed I scattered…but, when I looked with binoculars—there was the Dickcissel! Not only was this a “lifer” bird for me, but it was a very rare bird for this location in winter. From distance, it’s nearly indistinguishable from our common sparrows…I never would have identified it had I not looked with binoculars (and eventually got a photo through the window).
So even if you don’t consider yourself a birder, you can still contribute a LOT to the knowledge of birds and their conservation by simply collecting short, simple info from your own yard—with as little as 5-10 minutes a day.
And if you do end up giving eBird a try, I also recommend Merlin (a sort of “sister” app to eBird), which allows you to record bird songs and identify the birds singing in real time. It’s not 100% perfect (such as when it “identified” a Northern Cardinal singing when I was in Puerto Rico!), but it’s always improving---and it’s exceptionally easy to use. Again, you might be surprised by what you have around (and that birdsong you think is coming from a Robin might actually be a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak or a Warbling Vireo!). It’s absolutely one of my favorite apps to use in spring (especially for identifying some of those darn sound-alike warbler songs!) If you're a non-birder who ends up trying eBird, I'd love to hear about it!
Comentários