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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

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  1. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Oh dear must just be me: about 10+ times each in South Africa and Brazil respectively recently (for example). Rather than inventing full new names I just append "1", "2" etc. to the auto-generated one. But annoying Given that coordinates are used behind the scenes (are the primary identifier)...
  2. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    When you enter a "novel" location in the mobile app you have to give it a unique name. The auto-generated one is based around some Google understanding of the street and may well not be unique if you're (e.g.) birding sections of a long road. The real q is why it has to have a name at all, and...
  3. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Weird that you often have to name points which aren't hotspots, and that these names need to be unique. One might have thought the well-established lat-long system uniquely identifies a place without further id required... Yes ebird allows one to "record [...] location" but it doesn't let you...
  4. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Suggest you probably need to read a bit more. All these points are covered elsewhere and, as I've said several times, there are already apps which do what I suggest
  5. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Well if we want to be really pedantic about it I'm sure there are rfid and other tag reader applications which would allow you to determine exactly where a bird is, after you first tag it. Certainly you can follow other people's tagged animals (see e.g. Animal Tracker - Apps on Google Play )...
  6. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Yes but this isn't from ebird itself and (iirc) you cannot bulk download your data with it. In fact, I already have ways of getting all my GPS traces, but not any official ebird way. My point is that ebird itself should be offering this. In Europe they would probably fall foul of data protection...
  7. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    It not open, it's not transparent and, when it comes to its data model, it's not well designed because the model is wrong. Just because it's citizen science that's no excuse, and precisely because it's that it should be open. Other systems get closer to this ideal... (At minimum I'd like to be...
  8. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Very unclear how one can get this for any hotspot one didn't designate oneself as there are no boundaries. Not sure about that. The GPS tracks are (extremely) personal information and there are few checks on these volunteers. Basically this would present a massive opportunity for abuse...
  9. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    It already exists. It's when you record a bird as an "incidental". I get the feeling that they're trying to move people in this direction anyway because (I believe) they're trying to get people to produce lists of shorter duration. Aggregating to hotspot adds greatly to the error because you've...
  10. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    But people are encouraged to assign their data to them at point of entry and many will. So they will "hoover up" stuff they probably shouldn't have [although we cannot know because hotspots have no boundaries] ok probably. But point remains. Even if you're working with ebird data as it comes...
  11. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    No because we know or can account for differences in the distances at which it's possible to perceive species. Either grossly (e.g. blanket approach for sea watches or prairies) or specifically based on knowledge of the place and/or the species. The corrections will be imperfect but better than...
  12. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    I do use ebird. If ebird captures the data at point of entry then yes there will be some erroneous positions but the error will be lower and less systematic than the hotspot approach. One way to understand that if you walk a straight line transect recording as you go I use ebird but only...
  13. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Sorry but this misses on nearly all points. They've been examined in various other threads, perhaps including this one (not looked back to see). Just to give a flavour, the whole point of ebird on mobs is that you can enter things as you see them with minimum fuss. It would be no extra work at...
  14. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    All very well, and you can this for any arbitrary boundaries if you get the entire database (which you can also do). It doesn't get around the problem that the data model is wrong. The checklists refer to an area in most cases and don't represent locations of individual bird sightings. And those...
  15. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    I disagree. In the absence of any other evidence, the evidence you have is all you know about a subject. You would not disregard this evidence and say "perhaps it's biased so I'll completely ignore it". Instead you'd say "well perhaps this information is wrong or biased but it's all I have and...
  16. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    If you want to do that, record where the bird was actually seen ! ...Not where some random hotspot is...
  17. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    E.g. if you were deriving a density surface as part of a '"probability of encountering" calculation, you'd just weight each record by the inverse of the distance travelled during the checklist (so less precise locations contribute less to the final estimate). For a given record, you still have...
  18. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    A silly and arbitrary limit and, unless things have changed, perhaps not correct. As I've argued before, it doesn't matter what distance a checklist covers if you insist on doing things the ebird-data-model way (i.e. wrongly). Longer distances still yield useful data, it's just less precise...
  19. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Yes. As far as I know, any GPS track is not used (except, possibly to derive a single representative location to which to assign the checklist, and distance travelled). It makes ebird very arbitrary with respect to birds' precise actual locations. If distance and time are accurately recorded...
  20. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    compared with birds they're simply not. And plenty of other systems let you record those other things as you go [i.e. +/- like ebird but including other taxa] Edit: also to be clear, as long as the taxon and date are recorded, then it doesn't matter if the taxonomy changes later. That's only...
  21. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Well I have a doctorate which was largely entomological, and I'm a visiting researcher at the NHM London. So I'd like to think I know a bit. Yes there are lots of entomological taxonomy studies—more than ever before—and each will likely lead to changes for the reasons I've noted. However, if...
  22. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Don't get me started on the stupidity of this...
  23. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Actually increasingly not true. Of course global lists do exist for pretty much everything---it's just they're in paper databases. But inaturalist, encyclopaedia of life, gbif, observation.org, iGoTera, Species Files etc etc show it's possible and in some cases show how to do it. Taxonomy...
  24. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    Taxonomy for any group changes with the number of studies and studiers (since all taxonomy is subjective: you impose categories on something which is in fact a continuum). There are far fewer entomologists and botanists than ornithologists so fewer studies. Therefore the taxonomy is more stable...
  25. T

    eBird and Birding on the move

    I actually disagree with this. Since all taxonomy is always subjective, in some sense all taxonomy for all groups is always uncertain---including birds. Because of the subjectivity, groups with fewer taxonomists actually have much more stable taxonomies. For example, I do not believe there are...
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