eBird

I spent some time exploring eBird today and signed up to be able to submit bird observations to them. This site is a joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. The Cornell Lab has for a long time been interested in citizen science, organizing participatory activities such as feeder counts, the Great Backyard Bird Count (held mid-February), and winter finch studies. What eBird provides is a place to submit bird observations of all North American species at any time and place.

The interface to submit observations works well and at first glance succeeds in striking the balance between simplicity and capturing sufficient information to provide useful data. It distinguishes between casual observations and more formal surveys such as point counts, transects, or area searches. I’m a little less happy about the interface to display observations: there doesn’t seem to be a way to display a data table for an observation locality, nor do I see a way to download portions of the database for research. Presumably improvements to the display of observations will come in time. I think eBird will work well for birders such as us who are hopeless about keeping formal field notes but enjoy doing the occasional full checklist or count.