Ebird Question (1 Viewer)

[Birdy1]

I have seen on the hertfordshire bird club website (Herts Bird Club | Herts Bird Club Welcome) that there was supposedly a sighting of a lesser spotted woodpecker at Rye Meads Nature reserve yesterday. It is the second sighting this year, yet there hasn't been anything on Ebird.
Is there any way I can register it onto Ebird without out it counting as my sighting?
I think they are quite rare now? And that people would be interested to know but there may be something I just haven't noticed.

 

[THE_FERN]

In a convoluted way you could award it to someone else (the finder) but it's not easy.

I think you'd have to create a trip list, share it with the other person and then edit your copy to remove the sighting. This could leave you with a null list: I don't know whether the ebird system would accept that

 

[Richard Prior]

I have seen on the hertfordshire bird club website (Herts Bird Club | Herts Bird Club Welcome) that there was supposedly a sighting of a lesser spotted woodpecker at Rye Meads Nature reserve yesterday. It is the second sighting this year, yet there hasn't been anything on Ebird.
Is there any way I can register it onto Ebird without out it counting as my sighting?
I think they are quite rare now? And that people would be interested to know but there may be something I just haven't noticed.

I personally don't think you should go down that road (or slippery slope perhaps ), it sounds as though there's already a way of people checking for and sharing sightings in Herts (the website you mention) and unless you get the finder to start using eBird that's where the sighting will be accessible.

 

[MiddleRiver]

Agree with @Richard Prior

Also remember that rare sightings often don't show up for several days (at least where I live in US). Our reviewers are volunteers and response/confirmation is not always 'timely', so a bird might have been reported but won't show up for a while. I've had this happen even when I had definitive photographs and multiple viewers seeing the bird.

 

[jurek]

Better not!

First, it is a third party sighting, and you risk that it was a mistake and you propagate confusion.
Second, ebird has American privacy policy (mostly, they ignore it), which many people in Britain are not comfortable with.
Third, it is best to direct people to Hertfordshire database, and encourage ebird to collaborate and merge with other regional databases rather than duplicate them.

 

[Mysticete]

If you want to look for the bird yourself, you can of course ebird it if you find it. But you shouldn't ebird birds you yourself haven't seen, since it could very well be a misidentification or other details may be incorrect. I think the only exception to this is well-documented historical data, which this wouldn't fall under.

 

[THE_FERN]

Better not!

First, it is a third party sighting, and you risk that it was a mistake and you propagate confusion.
Second, ebird has American privacy policy (mostly, they ignore it), which many people in Britain are not comfortable with.
Third, it is best to direct people to Hertfordshire database, and encourage ebird to collaborate and merge with other regional databases rather than duplicate them.

"collaborate with" here means ebird will happily take all your records. Be clear it [Cornell] wants to take over the [birding] world !

...I agree that broadly you don't want to report other people's sightings. Doubtless there are times when this is acceptable though... ...If you do use ebird, I advise remaining anonymous.

 

[Steve Lister]

As an eBird user and also a regional reviewer I would say NO. It is for your records.

If you feel the need to pass the record on then just make sure that the county recorder is aware of it - they probably are already as they may have seen the same thing that you saw.

 

[jurek]

"collaborate with" here means ebird will happily take all your records. Be clear it [Cornell] wants to take over the [birding] world !

This caused much ruffled feathers in some places in Europe at one time. Basically, people submitted sightings to a regional database X, and later seen a publication with lots of their rare bird records without their name (only as Regional Database X 1995), or citizen scientists seen publications made mostly from their data and not cited, or cited marginally in the acknowledgements. So this approach changed elsewhere

Even stranger is for me, that photographers accept that they submit photos to ebird for free, and ebird can legally publish them later for money.

 

[THE_FERN]

This caused much ruffled feathers in some places in Europe at one time. Basically, people submitted sightings to a regional database X, and later seen a publication with lots of their rare bird records without their name (only as Regional Database X 1995), or citizen scientists seen publications made mostly from their data and not cited, or cited marginally in the acknowledgements. So this approach changed elsewhere

Even stranger is for me, that photographers accept that they submit photos to ebird for free, and ebird can legally publish them later for money.

Some of us don't submit photos to ebird (but also maintaining ebird costs money)

 

[Kirk Roth]

As an eBird user and also a regional reviewer I would say NO. It is for your records.

If you feel the need to pass the record on then just make sure that the county recorder is aware of it - they probably are already as they may have seen the same thing that you saw.

eBird policy is that you aren't allowed to submit unseen records to an account for that particular entity. Misattributed records (of many kinds) get removed from the database.

The way around this is that accounts can be created for local bird clubs and for historical records. So for example if the Herefordshire Bird Club had an eBird account, the woodpecker and other records seen by the club could be entered. The Rye Meads Nature Center could start an eBird account for anyone birding there. There could be a Herefordshire County historical records account. These are useful because they can include sightings from scientific literature or birders long passed, among other valuable information. These sorts of accounts are not uncommon in the U.S. and I believe somewhat in Latin America and Africa, but I have noticed very few in Europe.

I'm sure you can think of others. Needless to say, if you start one of these yourself, its better form if you are committed to it. E.g. do you (and hopefully a group of colleagues) want to be responsible for all the historical records? If not, maybe try to convince one of the other entities to start something.

 

[hookem2010]

Not directly related to the OP's question(sorry!), but as an ignorant American who doesn't post high-quality photos, why do I care if Cornell has access to my checklists? I'm voluntarily posting my location and the time I'm there, and am happy to share what I've seen. What am I missing?

 

[THE_FERN]

Not directly related to the OP's question(sorry!), but as an ignorant American who doesn't post high-quality photos, why do I care if Cornell has access to my checklists? I'm voluntarily posting my location and the time I'm there, and am happy to share what I've seen. What am I missing?

Probably you don't.

However, many object to data/images etc they've donated for free being used to generate profit for someone else. In Europe we have some unfortunate history where (for example) recorders lost the legal right (at least in principle) to be associated with or indeed to have access to data they submitted.

I'm not suggesting ebird will do this, but Cornell has a bit of form here: the Neotropical bird site was assembled by volunteers for free. It's now part of the paywalled Birds of the World site. Contributors have some kind of access deal (free or reduced fee afaik), but that's at odds with their original intention when they gave their time for at least some of them.

Probably there is a GDPR-style concern which Cornell could and really should address. That's the absolutely inexplicable (to me at least) inability you have to recover all the information you've submitted. In particular, there is no way to download GPS tracks. Implementing this would be "simple"---at least in principle.

 

[hookem2010]

Thanks for the informative response!