Hey everyone Are there any savvy ebird users out there that could help me out? My son and I have would like to upload our life list to ebird but can’t seem to find a way to do it without entering the exact date and other details. All we have is a all time list and about twenty little notebooks that would take years to sort through and upload. Any shortcuts please! Respectfully, Adam Bruins
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I always use a small notebook (writing things down engraves things in my memory better than typing with two fingers). And then transfer observations to eBird, which I have been using since 2012 and find very useful. There is a small army of regional eBird moderators who keep an eye on odd/erroneous observations. They have picked up my penchant for writing down House when I mean Tree sparrow and vice versa etc. And they queried my records of Guam rail (now extinct in the wild) so I wrote and pointed out the dates of the records, as I was lucky enough to live there before the tree-snake got them all. Hotspots are an ongoing mess, with an example being a local (Mission Beach) rainforest walk, which apparently includes waders from Cairns Esplanade. Some of the data may get entered as a day’s outing, which might cover 100 km and many habitats, as different people are differently picky about what they record. So hotspots for me are rarely used. But you can select any site from a map and it will bring you recent records. And if the hotspot errors really annoy you, you just write to eBird and point them out. I have just installed the new eBird app, tested it yesterday after my beach walk. It sat there fixing my location at home then brought me flags of about 20 sites nearby that I had logged over time. Picked the beach, entered the birds quickly and far more easily than the clunky Birdlog app I hardly used (now deleted). That said, it is still easier to scribble in a notebook walking along a trail than typing on a small screen, trying not to trip over rocks or tree roots. But in a car, I used the Birdlog app while we were driving in the middle of nowhere and saw good birds en route – the app got its lat and long fix quickly, very useful, and you tidy it all up on eBird and notebook later. The new eBird app will make that even easier, but will never replace my little notebook. Helen < ')/////==<
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My writing is pretty ordinary too ( I have the arthritis in the knuckles from regular canings about it), but at least I can read it, mostly. I will just stick to the system that works for me. Carl Cliffor
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Hi Roger, Yes, the app is for recording and submitting sightings & no, it does not claim to be a field guide. My bone with it, is that it claims to be able to give checklists for “hotspots”, which I presume are based on atlas and ebird records, but the list that it throws up are somewhat curates eggs, being ok in parts, but with some interesting records. I have looked at several locations within a 20 Km radius of home, and each one is somewhat different, so the lists can’t be state or region lists. Looking at the 3 tabs, there did not seem to be any difference in the species listed. The matter, for me, is now academic, as I have deleted the app. I will stick with my notebook and pencil, recording the sightings on the program I use on my lap/desk tops and continue squirting my sightings to ebird via CSV file. Much simpler. Carl Clifford
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Hi Carl, First let me say that I have not looked at the App – I am not able to use it at present because my iPod Touch 4 is not compatible with iOS7 (or 6 for that matter). However from use of an earlier version of BirdLog (1.6.1) I have some experience of how it operates. I assume that this App is for data entry, recording and submission, Does it also claim to be a field guide or species distribution guide? The list is not for the hotspot, it is for the region. Which region I guess may depend on your settings. From my reading of the details in the App Store:- – Full global taxonomy based on The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World. “- Checklists customized for your location and time of year, showing most likely species based on eBird data.” There are 3 tabs above the species entry box, marked All, Likely and Checked. Have you examined these to see what lists are presented? It would be very restrictive to have a species selection list that had only the 12 species previously reported to eBird from Mataram Ridge Park, Woongarrah. I would expect that when the App recognises your location it selects the appropriate checklist. That could be Australia, or SE Australia or just NSW. When I take my Morcombe or Pizzey & Knight field guides anywhere they have lots of birds that could not possibly be present. That applies to the Apps, or old fashioned paper versions. In any case having a large list to choose from should not be a problem because it accepts four letter entry, as does my much earlier BirdLog 1.6.1 Regards Roger, —–Original Message—– Sent: Wednesday, 17 June 2015 3:04 PM Cc: Roger Giller; Sonja Ross; Paul Coddington; birding-aus@birding-aus.org Peter, When you find some nearby hotspots, you might get some interesting results. I have just pulled up Mataram Ridge Park, Woongarrah, on the NSW Central Coast and found an interesting list. Among other interesting species, were Little Penguin, Cape Barren Goose, Brown Booby, Emu, just about every species of robin in Aus, and something called Peep Sp. I would happily give $1000 per species to any one who can verify the presence of any of those species in Mataram. I don’t think I will bother using this app, if, when I go somewhere and pull up a list for a nearby hotspot and be presented with a list of birds that could not possibly be present. Still needs a bit of work. Carl Clifford BirdLog, but now one can search for hotspots by town names rather than having to use postcodes. I haven’t tried entering any data yet. local businesses rather than the town itself. Selecting one of those resulted in a list of nearby hotspots, so the end result is the same.
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Maybe they are based on e-Bird lists i.e what has been reported by birders from sightings in the area. I just find that I’m more accurate with numbers using my iPad mini as my writing is untidy and my numbers end up being wrong if I’m walking for a while! It might be worthwhile putting your comment/query on the Facebook version to see if any of the testers respond, or maybe Margaret or Richard Alcorn.
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Hi Sonja, They don’t seem to be state lists, but if they are there are big holes in them. Each location was slightly different. I would like them to be accurate, as there were several species, such as Eastern Ground Parrot, that I thought I would have to travel a couple of hundred Km or so to see. Meanwhile, I think I will stick to the good old Mk I notepad and pencil Carl
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Once I managed to locate the app in iTunes (by clicking on eBird mobile in the message I got from ebird) all seems good. I asked for the existing hotspots near my current location and immediately got a good set thereof. I haven’t tried inputting data or creating a new hotspot yet. Like Sonja, I believe the list of species to be a State (or, for those in the ACT and NT, Territory) list. Martin Martin Butterfield http://franmart.blogspot.com.au/
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Hi Carl, I tried it out today for the first time and found it was better than the original BirdLog one in that they have put the “done” at the top which makes less flicking back and forward. I had the impression that they were state lists rather than local lists, but don’t really know. I foun it easy to use when out walking, but haven’t tried searching for a place/hotspot yet. Sonja
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Peter, When you find some nearby hotspots, you might get some interesting results. I have just pulled up Mataram Ridge Park, Woongarrah, on the NSW Central Coast and found an interesting list. Among other interesting species, were Little Penguin, Cape Barren Goose, Brown Booby, Emu, just about every species of robin in Aus, and something called Peep Sp. I would happily give $1000 per species to any one who can verify the presence of any of those species in Mataram. I don’t think I will bother using this app, if, when I go somewhere and pull up a list for a nearby hotspot and be presented with a list of birds that could not possibly be present. Still needs a bit of work. Carl Clifford
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I use “Birds Near Me” app which is map based and find that works very well – it uses the ebird data and shows hotspots on a google map. Its not a data entry tool however. Message: 4 < sonja.ross7@gmail.com> Cc: Paul Coddington < paul.coddington@internode.on.net>, “birding-aus@birding-aus.org” < birding-aus@birding-aus.org> Message-ID: < C2F1879073AE7347BAB44065F143E1700193A24EE3@nuwvicms2> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”us-ascii” The eBird app has just been released for iOS. Looks very similar to BirdLog, but now one can search for hotspots by town names rather than having to use postcodes. I haven’t tried entering any data yet. Oddly, when I searched for Wandiligong, the only results it returned were local businesses rather than the town itself. Selecting one of those resulted in a list of nearby hotspots, so the end result is the same. Peter Shute
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The eBird app has just been released for iOS. Looks very similar to BirdLog, but now one can search for hotspots by town names rather than having to use postcodes. I haven’t tried entering any data yet. Oddly, when I searched for Wandiligong, the only results it returned were local businesses rather than the town itself. Selecting one of those resulted in a list of nearby hotspots, so the end result is the same. Peter Shute
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That’s good to hear. Regarding my problem with having to swap constantly between the alpha and the numeric keyboards, Birdlog tech support said that the reason the keyboard defaults to numeric in the species search bar is that this allows you to enter the count as well as the species. E.g. typing “7 suf” is enough to enter a count for 7 Superb Fairywrens. That’s convenient if you have a full keyboard, but annoying if you don’t. Very annoying if you don’t have counts to enter, and need to change the 1 to an X. I’m experimenting with a 3rd party keyboard that has an extra row of numbers along the top of the alpha keyboard, and this seems to work ok. The keys are a little smaller, but there’s not a lot of typing to be done, and I can easily swap back to the normal keyboard if I want. For some reason, when Apple introduced support for third party keyboards with iOS 8, hundreds of developers decided that what people wanted was more colours and more emoticons on their keyboards, so it’s very hard to find ones that are actually useful among all those. I’m trying a free one called BullKey. I was a bit dubious because there’s only one review. It also gives access emoticons thingies, and manages to squeeze an ad at the bottom of the keyboard, but it seems to work. Third party keyboards can be a security risk if they demand full access, which allows them to transmit keystrokes back to a server. This one only asked for persmission to send me notifications, which I denied. Peter Shute
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Hi Roger, Thanks for putting that up. Hopefully it should be an improvement when doing lists in the field. Sonja
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Peter et al, eBird have brought the Birdlog App “in-house” and modified it to iron out these problems. It will look and feel more like the on-line data entry, and is already being beta tested by reviewers. Roger. —–Original Message—– Sent: Sunday, June 07, 2015 8:28 PM Cc: Paul Coddington ; birding-aus@birding-aus.org I’ve just sent them all my complaints. Do they act on suggestions they receive? Peter Shute Sent from my iPad
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The data entry page on eBird is has a search box. When you first open that page the cursor should be in the box. Start typing a species name and you get a drop-down list to select from, with one entry highlighted. If that’s the on you want hit enter, or select another from the list. That takes you to the species on the taxonomic list. Enter the count in the checkbox, add notes if you wish, then hit J to jump back to the search box. Roger. —–Original Message—– Sent: Saturday, June 06, 2015 6:09 PM Cc: birding-aus@birding-aus.org I usually just use the standard search function on the computer to jump to the species I want in the web interface, using the keyboard shortcuts so it’s faster (i.e. command F to search on my Mac), type in a few letters of the name (e.g “whist”), and then command G if it doesn’t go to the species I want (Whistling Kite instead of Golden Whistler) and I need to jump to the next one that matches what I typed in. It’s a bit slow but not too bad. Using the Birdlog app is really quick for entering data since you just type in a few letters and it autocompletes and then you just pick the species from the matches it presents. But I can’t figure out how to select locations that aren’t near you when you’re using the app, so you’d need to pick a bogus location (e.g. a personal location for your house) and then change the location to the actual place through the web interface once the list is uploaded from BirdLog.
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I’ve just noticed that if I collapse the autocorrect bar thing at the top of the keyboard, I can see enough of the OK button to tap it. The program must have been written before this bar was introduced, I think in iOS 8. I’ve also decided, based on the number of times I had to stop and attend to family requests during entry of just one survey, that minor program design flaws are not what’s really holding up progress. Peter Shute Sent from my iPad
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Yes Peter, I use an iPhone. On 07/06/2015, at 5:54 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
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I’ve just sent them all my complaints. Do they act on suggestions they receive? Peter Shute Sent from my iPad
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Hi Peter, It is annoying! Have you tried to contact them about it? Sonja
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The only way I’ve found to select a location not near me in Birdlog is to select the Search Hotspots By City option, then enter the postcode of that area. Then it lists all the hotspots in that area, which you can search by entering a few letters. I don’t know what you can do if you need to enter data where there’s no existing hotspot. Or if you don’t know the postcode. Seems like a strange shortcoming of the app. Peter Shute Sent from my iPad
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I’m using Birdlog already, Rob. I’ve just entered a couple of surveys to remind myself why I find it so tedious. It’s not so much the searching for species, it’s that there’s a lot of what seems to me like unnecessary swapping between the numeric and alphabetic keyboards, as well as having to hide the keyboard in order to find the OK button to submit each species. That’s on the iPad. It appears you don’t have to hide the keyboard on the iPhone version. Sent from my iPad
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I usually just use the standard search function on the computer to jump to the species I want in the web interface, using the keyboard shortcuts so it’s faster (i.e. command F to search on my Mac), type in a few letters of the name (e.g “whist”), and then command G if it doesn’t go to the species I want (Whistling Kite instead of Golden Whistler) and I need to jump to the next one that matches what I typed in. It’s a bit slow but not too bad. Using the Birdlog app is really quick for entering data since you just type in a few letters and it autocompletes and then you just pick the species from the matches it presents. But I can’t figure out how to select locations that aren’t near you when you’re using the app, so you’d need to pick a bogus location (e.g. a personal location for your house) and then change the location to the actual place through the web interface once the list is uploaded from BirdLog.
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Hi Peter, If you enter them via birdlog you can search for each bird and save plenty of time. Cheers, Rob On 06/06/2015, at 5:27 PM, Peter Shute wrote: Rob Hamilton Margate, Tasmania robhamilton2@optusnet.com.au
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Hi Peter, If you enter them via birdlog you can search for each bird and save plenty of time. Cheers, Rob On 06/06/2015, at 5:27 PM, Peter Shute wrote: Rob Hamilton Margate, Tasmania robhamilton2@optusnet.com.au
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I don’t mind entering lists for new trips as I do them, but I wish there was a faster way to enter the backlog. Does anyone have any tips for doing it quicker? The main trouble is that my notes list species as I encountered them, which means trawling up and down the web page to find them to mark them off. It would help if I knew the species list order off by heart, but I’ve only got a rough idea where any species is in the list, so I have to search for a lot of them. I’ve tried going through my notes doing all the pigeons, then the parrots, etc, but that means I’ve got to go through them multiple times, so it wastes as much time as it saves. Peter Shute Sent from my iPad
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I did the same as Mona, and agree that it’s rather mindless and laborious but very satisfying, and a good way to trigger nostalgic memories by reviewing all those old trips. I started with Australian trips where I saw lifers, and it only took me a couple of months or working on it now and then to get the Australian life list sorted, then I worked on trips that built my state list, then overseas trips, then everything else. Overall it took about a year but now it’s all done and it’s easy to enter new lists. eBird is a great resource, and the the more people use it, and the more information is added to it, the more useful it becomes.
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Hi Adam, Go to http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/973912-how-to-upload-your-life-list?b_id=1928 for an eBird Help article on your requirement. Make sure to read past the first few lines. Get back to me off list if you have any problems Regards Roger Giller —–Original Message—– Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2015 2:54 PM Hey everyone Are there any savvy ebird users out there that could help me out? My son and I have would like to upload our life list to ebird but can’t seem to find a way to do it without entering the exact date and other details. All we have is a all time list and about twenty little notebooks that would take years to sort through and upload. Any shortcuts please! Respectfully, Adam Bruins
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I haven’t played with ebird much, but I believe only the user can see data they’ve entered into “personal” sites, as opposed to “hotspots”. Is there any reason why one couldn’t create a personal site called “Australia” and enter the life list as one big survey? Then it would (I assume) be able to display the life list, targets, etc, while you work your way through the note books entering the data into public hotspots. Can anyone confirm whether this would work? Peter Shute Sent from my iPad
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Hi Adam eBird does specifically cater to this very issue, check out the “How to Upload Your Lifelist” help topic at http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/973912 If you have the time and the inclination, all those lists in your 20-odd notebooks would add fabulous data to eBird. I’ve spent about a year uploading all of mine – kind of satisfying in a mindless, laborious sort of way. Good luck with it. Mona
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thanks Chris That makes sense so I will slowly import the lists into the server to aid the database but for now I will take Alastair’s advice and create a general list that won’t affect the statistics. Respectfully, On Thursday, 4 June 2015, 16:49, Chris Sanderson < chris.sanderson@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Adam, I think that this isn’t really the purpose of using eBird. Remember that all the data in eBird is available for researchers to use to be able to say things about trends in bird populations. It’s great that is has added benefits for birders to keep track of lists, but if we start putting a whole bunch of records without location or date attached then that is data of limited or no value clogging up their database and making work for the moderators. Happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, but that’s my take on it. I’ve cc’d Mat Gilfedder who is involved in the Australian part of the project, so you may get a more authoritative answer from him. Personally I’d go the slow route and transfer your notebooks. So much valuable data there that could help birds! Cheers,Chris Hey everyone Are there any savvy ebird users out there that could help me out? My son and I have would like to upload our life list to ebird but can’t seem to find a way to do it without entering the exact date and other details. All we have is a all time list and about twenty little notebooks that would take years to sort through and upload. Any shortcuts please! Respectfully, Adam Bruins
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Hi Adam, I think that this isn’t really the purpose of using eBird. Remember that all the data in eBird is available for researchers to use to be able to say things about trends in bird populations. It’s great that is has added benefits for birders to keep track of lists, but if we start putting a whole bunch of records without location or date attached then that is data of limited or no value clogging up their database and making work for the moderators. Happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, but that’s my take on it. I’ve cc’d Mat Gilfedder who is involved in the Australian part of the project, so you may get a more authoritative answer from him. Personally I’d go the slow route and transfer your notebooks. So much valuable data there that could help birds! Cheers, Chris On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 2:54 PM, Adam Bruins < adam_bruins@yahoo.com.au > wrote:
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