What is eBird?
eBird is a great tool to digitally keep track of your own bird sightings, and you can browse other people’s sightings too! It is a free website and mobile app where you can submit a checklist of bird species you see each time you go out birding. Each checklist is tied to a location, and you can browse eBird to see what birds are being seen by other people at a given location at any time of the year. Most eBirders have their account set to “public” so everyone can see their bird sightings, but there is also an option to keep your bird data private if you so choose.
eBird also makes it easy to track your life list, country/state/county lists, or anything else you want to keep track of. Ren uses it to keep track of their yard list easily. You can go back and look up any of your bird records easily as well, if you wanted to know the first time you ever reported a Screech Owl you can find the date, time, and location of your first sighting with only a few clicks in eBird. You can even attach photos or audio recordings to your lists too!
Each eBird checklist you submit is added to a global database of bird sightings that are used by many scientists all over the world in their research. If you want to know more, visit this link: https://ebird.org/about or reach out to Ren any time. It is a great (and fun) way to participate in citizen science with minimal effort!
Does EBGO use eBird?
Yes! During each outing, we keep a running checklist of the different bird species we see and upload them to eBird at the end of the event. For those who attend the outings who have their own eBird accounts, we can share the checklists with you easily if you let us know your eBird username. This is preferred over several different people submitting their own list; if multiple people submit their own list with 3 Song Sparrows (for example) it tells eBird there were 3 Song Sparrows at that location times the amount of people who reported them, which artificially inflates the number of Song Sparrows present. Instead, we can share the checklist with you, so eBird knows there were only 3 Song Sparrows there but multiple people observed them. This also means you don’t have you keep your own list during our events, we have got you covered! eBird also gives you the option to edit the checklist for your own account. So for example if we saw a Chimney Swift but you didn’t get a good look at it and don’t want to count it, you can remove it from your list if you choose, without changing the original list! You can add birds to your list this way as well if you saw something that we missed.
If you want to view the bird species we saw during any given event you can access the EBGO eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/profile/OTAyNjY1MA but you will need to make a free account. If you do not want to make an account but still want to see the bird checklists, email us (EveryBodyGetOutside@pm.me) and we can send you the checklist directly.
How do I get started with eBird?
Making an eBird account is free! All you need to do is sign up with an email address, and you can start entering your bird sightings right away. First pick a location, and eBird will give you a checklist of expected bird species to pick from based on the time of year and that location, and if you see something that is not on that list all you have to do is search for it with the search bar. When you enter birds into a checklist it will give you the option to say how many of each species you saw. If you can count how many of each species as you go – great! If not, it is recommended to enter your best estimate of how many there were, even if it might be a little off. If you aren’t sure and don’t want to guess, you can put “X” instead of a number – HOWEVER if you use “X” even for one species on the checklist, it is significantly less useful to scientists who use eBird data for their research. Generally, it is best to give a good guess and avoid using the “X” if you can – your data could be used to help birds all over the globe!
eBird has a large number of volunteer eBird reviewers who work around the clock (for free!) reviewing eBird lists in their area. On occasion, an eBird reviewer may reach out to you with questions about one of your sightings. We want to be clear, the eBird reviewers are NOT out to get you, they are here to help! They have a very important job of keeping the eBird data as complete and accurate as possible, and sometimes they have to ask additional questions to confirm sightings of rare or unusual birds. Please don’t be hostile towards your local eBird reviewers, they are local birders like you who take bird data seriously and want to do their part to make sure checklists are accurate. Additionally, if they are reaching out to you about a sighting it usually means you saw something cool or unusual!
eBird has a lot of great help pages if you stumble across any questions while using their software. We recommend reading through some of the explanations for different parts of the checklist to get more familiar with them, but if you ever need help troubleshooting please feel free to reach out to us – Ren has been using eBird for about ten years now and is always willing to lend a hand.
Happy eBirding!
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