Recently, birding Facebook groups have taken off in Idaho, Ohio, Illinois, and elsewhere.  Many of us are already on Facebook all the time, so it is natural that birding should follow us to our social media.  Facebook is also a very convenient place to share photos, discuss identification, and get the inside scoop on local hotspots and hot birds.  With all that in mind, we've recently started the "Birding in Utah" Facebook group. If you're on Facebook, come join the discussion!

The comments field for each species in an eBird checklist allow you to describe the details of your observation, including the points that led to the identification of rare species.   You can also embed photos you took of a bird to help support your identification.  For particularly rare sightings (that are not likely to be disturbed by visitors and in public areas), you might consider also adding detailed directions to a bird so that others can go find it again.

Zachary DeBruine, at birdventurebirding.com, has developed a simple tool that will allow you to add a very specific image from Google Maps detailing the exact location of a bird you have found.  This can be a big help to others that go to look for the bird.  For example, here is the location of the exact Himalayan Blackberry bush at Lytle Ranch where I found a Harris's Sparrow a couple of weeks ago.

 
Generated by eBirdGM

When this image is embedded in a checklist, it includes a link to the location on Google Maps.  So if you wanted to look for this bird, you could get directions from your house to this specific shrub with just a few clicks!

Here are a few sample checklists with embedded maps:
Harris's Sparrow, Lytle Ranch
Blue Jay, Smithfield
Dickcissel, Farmington
Greater White-fronted Geese, Logan Polishing Ponds

For thorough directions on how to use this tool, and for the tool itself, see eBirdGM.

When I visited Costa Rica in 2011 I had learned very few of the bird songs and calls of the 800+ species found there.  Nothing was more frustrating than standing in thick forest and hearing squeaks and whistles of birds I couldn't see.  For the first time in a long time I was hearing noises I couldn't identify.  I was able to records a handful of songs that I later ID'd using Xeno Canto to compare to songs in their database, but for each bird I figured out there were probably 5 that I never did.  Xeno Canto is a collection of bird songs from around the world, stored in an online database accessible to everyone.  It operates under the creative commons non-commercial 2.5 generic attribution, allowing for free sharing, copying, distributing, and transmitting for non-commercial purposes.  For finding, listening to, and learning bird songs this is the one stop shop that is the golden standard .

Before Costa Rica I had listened to numerous songs on the site, but for some reason it never dawned on me to make a playlist from the library to take with me.   The songs and calls at Xeno Canto can be downloaded, set into playlists, and loaded on your iPod like any other music.  I had created numerous playlists over the years from my Peterson CDs--often creating habitat specific playlists for learning birds quickly and easily.  Today I look back to Costa Rica and think how nice it would have been to have had my iPod readily available to listen or even playback when I wasn't sure.  For Peru there was no question that I would need to build playlists.  I had read on more than one blog that in the Amazon you will see about 1/3 the number of birds you can hear.  So being able to identify some birds by song, or bring some birds in by tape would be a necessary evil.

I started downloading songs and calls nearly 4 months ago, and only wrapped things up this past weekend.  In all I downloaded some 800 species worth of "bird music".  This was surprisingly less than a gigabyte of space on my iPod, and separated out into playlists by family groups, or groupings of closely related families.  I tried to find the best recording for many species, sticking with songs for certain species, while only downloading calls of other birds.  I prefer calls because they can be used year round and make sense--where songs are used specifically for breeding birds.  Where there was no option--or few options, I just went with what was available.  For some species only 2 or 3 recordings were available--and often those were not great.

Wading through the1000's of available recordings the majority were in fact of poor quality--but none-the-less I found certain recordists whose quality and quantity of recordings made me go back to them time and time again.  Andrew Spencer from our neighboring Colorado had perhaps the best recordings for Peru and other South American countries--I would guess that no less than 1/2 of the songs downloaded were recorded by him (I believe he is one of the top contributors to the site as well).  Jeremy Minns, Tayler Brooks, and a few others also had great recordings that I relied on when available.

In the end there was no real learning of songs or calls--it is just to much for me to take in.  Listening to the songs of 30 different woodcreepers who really all sound very similar, or Tit-Spinetails that seemingly differ by just a note here and there are almost frustrating.  The calls of dozens of tanager and finches that are just seeps and clicks make me wonder if the tapes will be helpful in the end.  I have a feeling I will resort to them nto necessarily to try an ID something I hear--but to try and call in something I know is in a certain area.

Here in the states Xeno Canto is a great tool for learning birds in areas you plan on traveling to, or for building custom playlists for those areas.  It's a hassle to flip through 800 songs when you may only need 10 or so for a specific region--building that custom list could take less than 30 minutes, and while you are building it, you can be learning the songs and calls by listening to them on the site.  I know that in the future Xeno Canto is going to be my go to resource for building playlists--I guess Peru will be a a test run to see how it works out!

eBird is finally making some much needed UI improvements to their website. They announced this week the all new data entry section and provided a link for current users to beta test the new interface and platform. Let me start by saying well done for starting to make the improvements to what is an outdated website. To be honest it was a little outdated in terms of looks from the get-go.

Step 1: Where did you bird?

The new interface is sleek and loses some of the tacky design flaws of the first version. It allows you to enter comments and age and sex information right on the checklist--a nice new feature that used to be after you had entered all your species. The right navigation that follows the user as they scroll has become very popular on a lot of websites,and it works well here, so that's a plus. It keeps important information visible as you scroll so you don't have to go back to the top.

Step 2: Date and Effort

It's not perfect however. I question some of the design--being a designer that's what I do. I don't love the single column checklist for starters. I'm not saying I like the current mess either. But somewhere in between, with a 2 or 3 column layout would shorten the page by 1/2 to 2/3 and make better use of the space available.

Step 3: What did you see or hear?

Now I spoke of the positive of the right nav, however it seems out of place on the right side. Fundamentally it makes sense to be on the left as the information there is stuff you would want to enter before you start adding your sightings. Not a major issue but something that as a UX designer bothers me.

Step 3: What did you see or hear?
(add details view)

And what about adding those details. I have to admit, I don't love the execution. It's in the right direction but could still use some work. The actual interaction and layout could be improved quite easily.

Your checklist has been submitted!

Overall, eBird is moving towards true north now. With some work and maybe hiring a UX consultant (right here--Chris and Brian I'm talking to you) there are some improvements that could be made to make the program even better. Maybe my next post will be a redesign of eBird I worked on a while ago for a side project. Anyways, thumbs up eBird--everyone else, you can check out the new data entry site below:

http://demo.ebird.org/ebird/submit

This week eBird released its all new "Occurrence Maps". These maps, which are called STEM (Spatio-Temporal Exploratory Model) maps, use eBird checklists that report all species and include effort. The location of each checklist is associated with remotely-sensed information on habitat, climate, human population, and demographics. Fine-scale patterns of species occurrence relative to these variables (over 1000) are generated both regionally and temporally, to produce predicted occurrence at some 30,000 locations for every day of a single year (2008 in this case). This massive volume of information is then summarized on maps, which in many cases provide unprecedented information about the annual cycles of North American birds. These maps showcase the power of eBird – year-round, continental-scale monitoring of all species. Each species map is displayed with a text overview of the broad-scale migration patterns, along with an interesting biological story to consider.

Below is the map for Western Tanager:

Western Tanager Occurrence Map. Couresty of eBird

According to eBird:

The model performs exceptionally well for this species, and we believe these maps are accurate representations of where and when Western Tanagers occur in the United States. While some species (e.g., Mourning Dove or Red-tailed Hawk) do not have specific habitat associations, Western Tanager generally prefers pine forests for breeding. They do not breed in desert habitats, so their breeding range in the West is strongly defined by elevation and rainfall, and the tanagers are found in mid- to upper elevations in the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada ranges. The fine-scale accuracy of the model is probably largely due to the fact that the habitat layers used for the models closely match the actual habitat preferences of the species. In general STEM maps do very well with evergreen specialists, like Western Tanager and (in the East) Brown-headed Nuthatch, since one of the key layers defines this forest type quite well. During migration (April, and September - October in particular) Western Tanagers occur in a variety of western habitats, including urban and suburban parks, deserts, and even patches of trees in grasslands.

During the breeding season, the map appears to focus on the montane forests, when the migrants arrive at their breeding grounds. The pressure to arrive at breeding areas and claim territories causes the spring migration to occur relatively rapidly, as compared with the more protracted fall migration. Fall migration in Western Tanager actually begins in early to mid-July, when the first adults return to Mexico. From August to October, migration brings Western Tanagers back to the lowland areas that they use in spring, but notice how much more slowly their overall departure progresses.

Pretty cool stuff! Although this model worked out really well there seemed to be some talk about some species models weren't working out that well. Currently there are only a handful of maps available. They can be seen here.