Using eBird - how to record distance and protocol

[Gord]

I have been meaning to share some more eBird use tips for awhile but a busy summer has been keeping me off my computer. In some ways, that's great!

Before I forget, I'd like to share a link to a past discussion that talks about flagged records and why some species that are common in certain areas get flagged as rare. There's also some encouragement to share some details on flagged records as you input them to improve the 'quality' of your sightings. Please feel free to comment on that post with any questions. bcbirding.proboards.com/thread/10851/ebird-flagged-records-explained

First off, and this is one that I think many are unaware of (I was also one) is how to record distance traveled. It would make sense (thus why many do it) to records the total distance walked. Say if you walked up Cheam Mountain and back and wanted to record the 9 hard earned kilometers that you traveled. However, Cheam Mountain trail is 4.5km from parking lot to peak and we should only be saying that we covered 4.5km on our eBird traveling checklists. Yes, birds may have come and gone since you first passed the 1km mark but all the same the area that was 'sampled' is 4.5km. I'm confident everyone keeps a mental note as they go on a birding outing of what they've seen to minimize double counting of birds passed earlier in the walk and anything new gets recorded. I think this all the more just makes it seem right to say 9km. But if one says they counted over 9km but only tallied the birds using 4.5km then the final results suggests that there's a lower concentration of birds in the area that was actually covered. I hope that sentence makes sense. I rewrote it like four times and settled on the original wording.

Coles notes of the above is to count your walk one way and not the return trip unless you're walking a loop or return to your vehicle on a route far enough away from your first path to warrant recording the whole distance.

The type of protocol used in sharing eBird checklists is quite important. What you see and what it took to see the birds is an important element of this scientific venture. Recording ten Song Sparrows doesn't mean too much unless how much ground was covered to see the 10 is included.

I think the most common protocol is the Traveling Protocol. Pretty straight forward. If you walked/traveled that's a Traveling Protocol. However some more musing on this one later on.

Stationary is also pretty self-explanatory. Sitting on your deck watching your feeders, sitting on a mountain top watching migrating raptors or even stopping your car to look at a flock of waterfowl in a field and recording all you saw from that vantage point.

Historical Protocol is one I rarely use but if someone has old field notebooks that do not include any details of your birding effort. Sadly some of my really old ones do not have this. All the same this information is useful and can be shared with this protocol.

Incidental Protocol is, or SHOULD (in my opinion), be quite commonly used as well. Driving to town and seeing a Turkey Vulture fly over in January is noteworty as most of these guys should be far south in the winter. But since you were not birding or it's difficult to see smaller birds in the car on the highway this should be an incidental record. Saying you were Traveling Protocol is not a good idea as it tells eBird that there was nothing else in the area when that's not entirely true because who's to say what else was there; especially smaller species. When I'm working in the yard or at the playground with the kids sometimes I see or hear something that is interesting. Sure, I'm always listening and usually watching as I go about my days, but unless I'm recording everything, have my eyes watching for birds and recorded the distance I've covered these checklists are Incidental Protocol. Back to the winter Turkey Vulture, it is good data to share that to track the species' possible changes in abundance in the winter. Incidental Protocol does just that. But it doesn't 'pollute' the data that tracks population numbers by under reporting.

I hinted in Traveling Protocol there's more to consider and it concerns birding effort. Sometimes I see a checklist for a large area covered where the observer drove several kilometers doing birding. They're birding for sure so it makes sense to say it's a Traveling Protocol. But here's where discretion comes in. Was the area that was covered, covered well? Let's say Sumas Prairie offers many kilometers of roads to cover and a birder covers 10km. That's quite a bit to cover in a reasonable time and all of us will 'cherry pick' to an extent and spend a fair bit of time in our vehicles between the more promising areas. If the checklist says 10 Savannah Sparrows in May over 10km covered that's a bit of a problem. The checklist is likely massively under reporting what's really there but the observer saw 10 so that's the right thing to do is say 10. But on the flip side, birding is supposed to be fun and the last thing eBird wants to do is burn people out or make them give up sharing checklists because expectations are too high. Again I say discretion is important here in that reasonable care is taken to record what you can, not drive too fast and so forth. And I'll always say, be aware of the goals of eBird, but share your checklists that you collect to the best of your ability.

Some ideas on how to eBird and still be able to record what you see (it's fun to see lots of species) but also provide some good eBird data too.

Recently I birded Columbia Valley and here's what I did if you click the link to the eBird hotspot. ebird.org/canada/hotspot/L2732630

I recorded what I saw as I went along. This part of my notebook was the incidental part of my trip and I added to it for the whole time I was in that spot. I wanted to keep track of what I saw that evening. As I birded, a couple times I stopped to check out areas that caught my eye and walked and birded to my best ability. I did a couple traveling checklists and one stationary and I felt I saw or heard everything I could given my abilities. This was in the same Hotspot and it's totally acceptable to do this as much as you like. Actually, the best data comes from smaller chunks. The result was four checklists in about an hour for the same spot. In the comments I mentioned what part of Columbia Valley I did the Traveling or Stationary checklist. In the end, eBird data was satisfied with the traveling and stationary protocol and my added enjoyment of keeping a casual list as I went along was also considered. As I built my incidental list I still jotted down how many of each species I noticed. Sure, it's not indicative of what is really there, but then again since this is an incidental report it doesn't really matter. Still, putting 'x' for a species encountered isn't great and it's better to put some sort of number to each species at least in my opinion.

I'll stop there and I hope this was helpful. Any discussion or questions; please share. And again, please don't be put off by worrying if your checklists are good enough. Do your best and know that no checklists are way way worse!

[Ben]

Hi Gord,


I see your point, and I agree to an extent. Obviously the more care we take the better the data will be. Btw, I don't mean to sound rude offended, or upset in any way if I sound that way

What I think though is that if eBird has the data we give it from our phones, it should be pretty good at guessing how much effort we put into the list.

Example 1. A travelling checklist for 10km and time of 6 minutes. Obviously, this would mean that the birder was traveling at ~100kmph. I think using some conditions, it'd be easy to tell if someone was just doing some highway observing...

Example 2. A hike that comes back along the same route. From the tracking data you can see exactly where someone was walking. So, if they walked the same way up as down, you would (like you mentioned) be able to assume the list is for about half the area that you would otherwise assume for a straight line. The issue I have with not doing the whole way is this: what do you do once on your way back (and you are no longer tracking) and you see a bird that you didn't earlier? Do you add it to the first list? That wouldn't be good because the time is wrong etc. I guess ideally you would make a second checklist for the whole way down? Then you can recount all the birds you saw earlier... And incidental in that case doesn't seem right either.

Example 3. You could travel in a zigzag manner and effectively cover less area than you might think. Or how far do you look? At the ocean you can scope out a bird a mile away, does that count for your stationary location on shore? I sometimes see ravens above mt. Thom from Sardis. Do those count? These questions all point out that distance covered doesn't necessarily determine the area birded...


I think that the skill and experience of a birder also greatly affects what is reported. For example, if I never wrote what I only heard, the number of species (and quantities) on my lists would be much lower. Or if I didn't know the birds of a region, birding becomes much harder. So there has to already be some analysis of the birder/checklists to make the data useful.

So my view is this: any data is better than no data. Analysis is just as important as (or dare I say more important than) data quality IMHO, and with analysis the input requirements of the birder become less important.

Then again, maybe I'm the only one who feels this way. Those are my just my 2 cents.


Ps. If I edit my list's distance, what will happen to the map data? I know if you edit it before submitting it's modified at the same time...

[paulos]

Always excellent points, Gord. Thanks for sharing this.

Jon, regarding example 2, I think the idea is to keep birding the whole time on a hike, and recording the total, only enter the distance as one-way.

I have read on ebird that they request the correction of tracking data that backtracks the same route (something I regularly have to do in neighbourhood walks, about the only time I use ebird tracking).

[Gord]

Jon, thanks for the great feedback and not at all are your comments seen anyway other than intended. It helps narrow down the large narrative as well!

The tracking of distance on our phone is for our benefit in estimating how far we've went. At our end we still have to make a final decision on what distance we covered. The map data, to answer your final question last, isn't included in analysis. What's seen for distance is the number put on the list, not whatever the map might say.

Data analysis wouldn't 'catch' the long route in a short period of someone counting things from the highway. Unless someone was evaluating a small data set and was able to eliminate this peacemeal then it probably will get lumped in unless the data is filtered to remove checklists over a certain distance.

Example 2 is a good question as I wasn't clear on time spent. If you hiked and birded for 6 hours up and down, put the 6 hours. But the the one way distance covered in the 6 hours is encouraged to be used (4.5km not 9km if using Cheam Mtn example). On the way back down a new bird could be added. Or if you saw more of a species (one Chipping Sparrow on the way up and on the way down there were two together so add one). You are correct to suggest a new checklist for the way down. Actually that's very much ideal as one thing eBird has been encouraging is to do shorter distanced checklists. Like I did in Columbia Valley, one can do several checklists even in s short period of time.

Good points on Example 3 that many factors exist that can influence a count (weather conditions, birder experience, sight lines etc) Ebird does realize this is a citizen science effort and that variables will influence. These variables will be relatively consistent in that trends will be visible over time even if there's some less than ideal data included. As for your Ravens, count them and yes perhaps that does add a bit to a traveling count given the distance from your 'route' but also these encounters are relatively low compared to birds seen on the route as the bird needs to be big, identifiable etc at a distance.

All said adding data is the most important part within each person's abilities there's no disputing that. The point of this topic is to inform of the ultimate goals for others to consider. Speaking for myself, my data collection, even before eBird, has changed over the years and I would say it has improved dramatically from vague notes to quite detailed. I lament the lack of detail when I was younger as some interesting sightings are hard to confirm or quantify. Just now I've liked the idea of a new checklist on a return trip. But that might be a bit onerous for some understandably. The point is to enjoy birding and to share the results! We're not getting paid to do it so no reason to make it into work (unless it IS part of someone's job! )

Thanks for the great comments, Jon. Love your avatar by the way.


p.s. Paul, I wrote this reply over an hour between getting up and down so I didn't see your reply until I posted mine.

[paulos]

Aug 5, 2019 19:40:28 GMT -8 Gord said:

p.s. Paul, I wrote this reply over an hour between getting up and down so I didn't see your reply until I posted mine.

[

Gord, I’m not sure if this is commitment or obsession, but I for one am grateful you put in the time.

[Gord]

Thanks, Paul! I'm not sure either!

[murraybrown]

Just read this thread this morning and realize that I have been including my return distance as total kilometers travelled. I will change this protocol for my future reports. Even though my distance there and back takes approximately an hour I'm often surprised as to how many new birds I see on the way back to my car. Sometimes this comes close to doubling the number of species seen on the original trip.

I realize now that the historical data I have going back more than 50 years, while not complete with field notes, does provide the date and location of several hundred B.C. bird species that I have seen and probably would be useful to the compilers.

Thanks for all the work you are putting into this program Gord.