Clements 2021 Update Coming! (1 Viewer)

[Muppit17]

BotW might be updated (I haven't looked through in any depth) but I assume the eBird side is incomplete due to the lack of a news or twitter post suggesting it is finished, and the unresolved (but resolvable records). I actually don't know how to search for the species pairs, I had to think about some times when I saw some of the suspect species and manually search for the lists... in the lists you see the species pair in black text (not a link), and you cannot successfully search your own records for the species pair. I'm assuming this will get resolved at some point here

If you go to the update article, 2021 eBird Taxonomy Update — IN PROGRESS - eBird

Go down to the species section and you can search 'my records' against the relevant split.

I agree in saying with no notification it is best to assume 'still in progress'

 

[pbjosh]

If you go to the update article, 2021 eBird Taxonomy Update — IN PROGRESS - eBird

Go down to the species section and you can search 'my records' against the relevant split.

I agree in saying with no notification it is best to assume 'still in progress'

Here's an example of what I'm talking about: Lesser Short-toed Larks are listed as Mediterranean / Turkestan Short-toed Lark at the moment, ala this page:

https://ebird.org/species/lstlar3

And it tells me I have an observation of this species pair, but if I click on the link for it, I get zero search results. This is the link to search your lifelist for records of the above taxa:

Sign in

ebird.org

I can remember what day I went and found some Lesser (now Mediterranean) Short-toed Larks so no problem. For Paraguayan / Magellanic Snipe I have stacks of observations strewn about through perhaps 1000 lists. I don't even remember what countries I have seen it in hehe...

 

[Nightjar61]

I saw Turkestan Short-toed Lark in Kazakhstan and the UAE. My sighting in the UAE changed right away with no problem. However, my sightings in Kazakhstan remained at Mediterranean/Turkestan Short-toed Lark and never changed over. Therefore I changed them manually. Funny thing is, Mediterranean Short-toed Lark isn’t even an option in Kazakhstan, so I don’t know why my sightings didn’t change automatically.

Dave

 

[Muppit17]

Here's an example of what I'm talking about: Lesser Short-toed Larks are listed as Mediterranean / Turkestan Short-toed Lark at the moment, ala this page:

https://ebird.org/species/lstlar3

And it tells me I have an observation of this species pair, but if I click on the link for it, I get zero search results. This is the link to search your lifelist for records of the above taxa:

Sign in

ebird.org

I can remember what day I went and found some Lesser (now Mediterranean) Short-toed Larks so no problem. For Paraguayan / Magellanic Snipe I have stacks of observations strewn about through perhaps 1000 lists. I don't even remember what countries I have seen it in hehe...

There appears to be an issue that is consistent for this species at least. For me, only one sighting of Turkestan Short-toed has come across and none for Mediterranean.

This sort of thing happened last time there was an update and I simply waited. The alternative is to raise a ticket via the link in the section I posted earlier.

 

[njlarsen]

I read somewhere that there are still a few observations that need to be sorted in ebird but that the taxonomy is finished in the sense of it is working for adding new observations.
Niels

 

[Steve Lister]

I think all of the relevant changes to my lists have been done.
The only quibble I have is that the division of Siberian and 'Amur' aka Stejneger's Stonechats seems somewhat arbitrary in China, as somebody else has alluded to above.
Steve

 

[Paul Clapham]

I am assuming that the update is still in process - no official end of update communication, and I still have a few records that are a bit up in the air (some slash taxa that can be assigned to species readily - Lesser Short-toed Lark complex for example, and some records that aren't displaying at the moment for daughter species - Paraguayan Snipe for example).

The eBird taxonomy update says

"Paraguayan Snipe occurs widely in South America and Magellanic Snipe are restricted to Argentina and Chile, but caution is warranted in migration and the austral winter when some Magellanic Snipe move north to winter at least rarely as far north and east as Uruguay."

So my "Paraguayan" observations, all being during migration in northern Argentina, all ended up as "Paraguayan/Magellanic Snipe". I expect that's where they will stay, and since I don't have any justification for saying they weren't migrating Magellanics I'm going to leave them there.

 

[Paul Clapham]

I actually don't know how to search for the species pairs, I had to think about some times when I saw some of the suspect species and manually search for the lists... in the lists you see the species pair in black text (not a link), and you cannot successfully search your own records for the species pair. I'm assuming this will get resolved at some point here

If you go into the eBird "Explore" menu and select "Species Maps" you can type in a "slash" name like "Paraguayan/Magellanic Snipe". Admittedly that gives you a map with everybody's records on it, so you have to spend some time looking for yours. You can restrict the records to a specific year and month, which would be helpful.

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

I updated my spreadsheet list with the new taxonomy and discovered a new armchair tick. They moved a subspecies from one species to another. I had the species in multiple places, including one that was obviously the subspecies that moved (based on location).

When I went into my eBird record, it still had the old species listed as "rare", so I changed the record myself.

 

[Muppit17]

There appears to be an issue that is consistent for this species at least. For me, only one sighting of Turkestan Short-toed has come across and none for Mediterranean.

This sort of thing happened last time there was an update and I simply waited. The alternative is to raise a ticket via the link in the section I posted earlier.

Went into eBird today and the Lesser short-toed Lark complex is now sorted, with my records of Mediterranean now showing correctly (without any input from me!)

Now only need to double check everything else.

 

[pbjosh]

Yeah my Lesser Short-toed Larks have been sorted as well. Paraguayan Snipe not yet. I've not exhaustively checked everything - I figure it will mostly/fully get sorted out at some point here. A status update would be useful but I guess one will be coming when it's "done" then we can go looking to see if anything is unresolved.

 

[njlarsen]

A status update would be useful but I guess one will be coming when it's "done" then we can go looking to see if anything is unresolved.

I understand that is the intent

 

[johnallcock]

I think all of the relevant changes to my lists have been done.
The only quibble I have is that the division of Siberian and 'Amur' aka Stejneger's Stonechats seems somewhat arbitrary in China, as somebody else has alluded to above.
Steve

Yes, something seems to be wrong with the stonechats in China. Quite a few records of Siberian Stonechat in areas where they don't occur. Because they overlap in some areas, it may take a while to review all the records and resolve these cases.

 

[Muppit17]

Yes, something seems to be wrong with the stonechats in China. Quite a few records of Siberian Stonechat in areas where they don't occur. Because they overlap in some areas, it may take a while to review all the records and resolve these cases.

I had always believed the ones I saw in Beidaihe were 'Amur', certainly that was what was assumed twenty years ago

What is the current thoughts, and where is the overlap?

 

[martinboer]

On eBird I lost two in lumps (American Crow and the Southern Caracara) but didn't pick anything up... So I lost two in the process. I'll check again in a few days to see if anything has changed but not what I was hoping for.

 

[awiner]

There's clearly rather a lot left to clean up - the stonechats, for one; also check out all the Common Gull records from the west coast of North America, Grass Wrens in the US, Tropical Gnatatchers on coastal Ecuador, etc. Patience!

 

[Paul Clapham]

...check out all the Common Gull records from the west coast of North America...

I checked out some of them, some quite recent records. There were none in my neighbourhood but several just across the strait which were posted earlier this year. The two that I looked at had both Common and Short-billed Gull on the same checklist, with no comments suggesting that the Common Gulls were the Kamchatka variety. It's hard to guess what eBird would do with those reports, if they have to get the local reviewers to query them then it could take a long time to deal with them.

Actually... I've been looking deeper into that and all of the Common Gull reports I've looked at also have Short-billed Gull on the same checklist. Some of them were posted by people whose names I recognize and who I'm sure knew the difference even last year. So, don't know what's going on there.

 

[awiner]

I checked out some of them, some quite recent records. There were none in my neighbourhood but several just across the strait which were posted earlier this year. The two that I looked at had both Common and Short-billed Gull on the same checklist, with no comments suggesting that the Common Gulls were the Kamchatka variety. It's hard to guess what eBird would do with those reports, if they have to get the local reviewers to query them then it could take a long time to deal with them.

Actually... I've been looking deeper into that and all of the Common Gull reports I've looked at also have Short-billed Gull on the same checklist. Some of them were posted by people whose names I recognize and who I'm sure knew the difference even last year. So, don't know what's going on there.

After checking a number of updates and finding (as you did) that each one has both Common and Short-billed gull, and that Common is often in much higher numbers (505 to 1 here! - https://ebird.org/pnw/checklist/S32755070), and thinking about how I might approach this sort of thing, it's pretty clear that what happened was:

• The user had entered "Mew Gull (505)" and "Mew Gull (American) 1"
• The eBird update took having both forms present as a sign that it should do something different than just treating them both as a single Short-billed Gull entry. Not sure why it didn't change "Mew Gull" to Short-billed/Common Gull in those cases, but there may be good reasons.

I checked a couple of "Grass Wren" in the US records, and sure enough both had both Grass Wren and Sedge Wren, so seems like the same problem there.

Stonechats seem a rather different problem, but I can't say I truly understand the expected range of Amur vs. Siberian Stonechat in SE Asia.

 

[Barbets48]

I think all of the relevant changes to my lists have been done.
The only quibble I have is that the division of Siberian and 'Amur' aka Stejneger's Stonechats seems somewhat arbitrary in China, as somebody else has alluded to above.
Steve

As someone who doesn’t know the ranges of Siberian vs Amur Stonechat I was curious as to where the eBird records for each are split geographically. I noticed that all my Thailand and SE Asia as well as Hong Kong records now show as Amur while the Southern China records (Guangxi, Guangdong) show as Siberian.

 

[James Eaton]

As someone who doesn’t know the ranges of Siberian vs Amur Stonechat I was curious as to where the eBird records for each are split geographically. I noticed that all my Thailand and SE Asia as well as Hong Kong records now show as Amur while the Southern China records (Guangxi, Guangdong) show as Siberian.

The problem lies in the distribution of przewalskii Siberian Stonechat, as that is a resident/altitudinal migrant that is found in at least part of the non-breeding range of stejnegeri, central China down to Northern Thailand. They tend to occur in different habitats, and also look quite different so as long as you have your notes/site details then you should be able to work out which one you have seen where.