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Does anyone know what the criteria is for eBird rare bird alerts? (1 Viewer)

howiewu

Well-known member
Hi,

Does anyone know what the criteria is for eBird rare bird alerts?

I submitted observations yesterday and today of a Spotted Sandpiper and a Prairie Warbler, both are not truly "rare" birds, but uncommon enough for my county (Fairfax County, Virginia), methinks.

But these never showed up in the eBird rare bird alerts, which is fine ... but I also see a few observations of "Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored)" which I thought are extremely common (I see them almost every day). I don't know what "makes the cut" or not.

Fore reference, I am referring to this report.

Thanks,
Howard
 
Hi,

Does anyone know what the criteria is for eBird rare bird alerts?

I submitted observations yesterday and today of a Spotted Sandpiper and a Prairie Warbler, both are not truly "rare" birds, but uncommon enough for my county (Fairfax County, Virginia), methinks.

But these never showed up in the eBird rare bird alerts, which is fine ... but I also see a few observations of "Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored)" which I thought are extremely common (I see them almost every day). I don't know what "makes the cut" or not.

Fore reference, I am referring to this report.

Thanks,
Howard

The criterion is really just whether it's something rare or unusual for the location and/or time of year that ought to be confirmed by an eBird reviewer before being added to the database. DE Juncos have usually migrated north--or to higher elevations--by appx. this time of year. So that is the reason confirmation is being required for them. Some years are unusual though; and juncos might be hanging about longer than usual this year.

Jim
 
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To add to that, eBird is still fairly new, so some of its criteria may not be as refined as the ornithological community's collective knowledge. The list of "not rare" birds for your county is probably not generated by talking to a local expert but automatically generated from your county's location and a larger database of records. I don't actually know how they developed their original model of bird occurrence, but something like that seems likely. The list of non-rare birds for my area has some I would not expect to see there as well (though some of these will probably be flagged as a "high count" if you claim you saw more than one). As for timing, there's some arbitrary boundaries there as well; I've noticed that the list of non-rare birds tends to change quite a bit on the first of the month rather than gradually throughout. They are no doubt continuously refining this model based on the observations people enter.
 
To add to that, eBird is still fairly new, so some of its criteria may not be as refined as the ornithological community's collective knowledge. The list of "not rare" birds for your county is probably not generated by talking to a local expert but automatically generated from your county's location and a larger database of records. I don't actually know how they developed their original model of bird occurrence, but something like that seems likely. The list of non-rare birds for my area has some I would not expect to see there as well (though some of these will probably be flagged as a "high count" if you claim you saw more than one). As for timing, there's some arbitrary boundaries there as well; I've noticed that the list of non-rare birds tends to change quite a bit on the first of the month rather than gradually throughout. They are no doubt continuously refining this model based on the observations people enter.

Hi LD,

The OP is, I believe, in heavily populated Northern Virginia (part of the DC greater metro area); I'm almost positive there is a local expert for the county that sets the eBird filters. It is certainly that way in Maryland, and has been for several years. (BTW, Maryland has one of the highest ratios of eBird reports per capita of any state in the country.)

Things are likely different in Nebraska--fewer people and likely fewer birders, so eBird filters may be less developed at this point in time. There may be a couple of things going on in your case that explains the anomalies you are seeing. First, if there is no expert for a particular county, they may just copy a list from another county or use the base filter for the state. Second, eBird changed only recently to allow filters to be set by day rather than month. It sounds to me like some of the filters for your area may not yet have been changed to take advantage of this new ability. (Or perhaps your recollections are from the time when the filters could only be set by month?)

Best,
Jim
 
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I agree with Jim about eBird.

Heavily birded Miami-Dade in southeast Florida has excellent filters set by our local eBird reviewer. The data is a lot better than many believe -- at least as good as the time honored Christmas Bird Counts.

Carlos
 
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