Lynx joins with Cornell (1 Viewer)

TomDerutter · Feb 15, 2020

After the 'Big' update when HBW was created it was pretty quiet on taxonomic front. At least this is something that should improve, with 'Birds of the world' linked to the ebird/clements taxonomy.
I'm also expecting quite a lot of the whole eco-system they are creating. ebird, merlin, macaulaylibrary, birds of the world... will all influence and improve each other. It feels like it's going to be more dynamic and alive then HBW/IBC ever was...
There's more free info to be found on https://ebird.org or https://www.macaulaylibrary.org/ then there was at IBC.

RafaelMatias · Feb 15, 2020

Jim M. said:
I've been reviewing thousands of eBird/MacCaulay Library photos recently, and have only found two mis-ID's so far. And it is easy to report them. Also, eBird provides more context for the photos since they are submitted with a list.

I'm not so optimistic, although I agree that a very large percentage is correctly identified. I've found quite a few obvious mis-IDs (on various regions, including the US), and not always the IDs are corrected after you report them. Take a look at the list below, the Purple Heron photo shows a Grey Heron. I've reported this case perhaps 6 times already (since the list was posted), but nothing ever happened.
https://ebird.org/checklist/S54237191

Nutcracker · Feb 15, 2020

RafaelMatias said:
I'm not so optimistic, although I agree that a very large percentage is correctly identified. I've found quite a few obvious mis-IDs (on various regions, including the US), and not always the IDs are corrected after you report them. Take a look at the list below, the Purple Heron photo shows a Grey Heron. I've reported this case perhaps 6 times already (since the list was posted), but nothing ever happened.
https://ebird.org/checklist/S54237191

They probably didn't believe you, because you said it was a Grey Heron - they'd only accept the correction if you'd said "Gray Heron" as also wrongly cited (after all, the site is in Europe, not USA) in that list :storm: 3

pbjosh · Feb 15, 2020

Jim M. said:
In my experience IBC was rife with photos of mis-identified birds, and having photos in two places meant more work if you were looking for photos of a species. I've been reviewing thousands of eBird/MacCaulay Library photos recently, and have only found two mis-ID's so far. And it is easy to report them. Also, eBird provides more context for the photos since they are submitted with a list. And the filtering options for photos are robust and easy to use: you can filter by location, time of year, age, and sex with a few clicks. So I'm seeing a lot of upsides to this.

In my experience I find mis-ID’d photos in eBird/Macaulay with quite some frequency these days, though they are indeed easy to flag.

Andy Adcock · Feb 15, 2020

pbjosh said:
In my experience I find mis-ID’d photos in eBird/Macaulay with quite some frequency these days, though they are indeed easy to flag.

Indeed, I'm in the midst of trying to understand why Stevenson and Fanshawe describe and illustrate Orange Weaver Ploceus aurantius as having a pinkish bill with grey eyes and yet there are multiple images such as this one on ebird......

https://ebird.org/species/orawea1

and this one from HBW........

https://www.hbw.com/ibc/photo/orange-weaver-ploceus-aurantius/bird-collecting-nest-material

I expect them to look more like this but even this bird is lacking the dark, loral area?

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/150237337547871714/

If anyone can explain what's happening here I'd be very grateful.

DMW · Feb 15, 2020

Nutcracker said:
They probably didn't believe you, because you said it was a Grey Heron - they'd only accept the correction if you'd said "Gray Heron" as also wrongly cited (after all, the site is in Europe, not USA) in that list :storm: 3

When I open the link, Grey Heron is recorded directly above "Purple Heron", with the English spelling.

Nutcracker · Feb 15, 2020

DMW said:
When I open the link, Grey Heron is recorded directly above "Purple Heron", with the English spelling.

Not for me. Presumably you have a personal account set to English, while they are spamming the rest of everyone and everything else with their default American imperialism. Teaching people in Portugal the wrong spellings for European birds. Printscreen:

RafaelMatias · Feb 15, 2020

Nutcracker said:
Not for me. Presumably you have a personal account set to English, while they are spamming the rest of everyone and everything else with their default American imperialism. Teaching people in Portugal the wrong spellings for European birds. Printscreen:

That's the default spelling because I wasn't logged in... But my preferred spelling (personal setting) on my ebird account is UK English, if that helps

DMW · Feb 15, 2020

Nutcracker said:
Not for me. Presumably you have a personal account set to English, while they are spamming the rest of everyone and everything else with their default American imperialism. Teaching people in Portugal the wrong spellings for European birds. Printscreen:

We've been here before. I'm not logged into my eBird account and it defaults to UK English spellings. It is your browser / browser settings that are the issue - that and your obnoxious anti-Americanism.

Andy Adcock · Feb 15, 2020

DMW said:
We've been here before. I'm not logged into my eBird account and it defaults to UK English spellings. It is your browser / browser settings that are the issue - that and your obnoxious anti-Americanism.

Why is it 'obnoxious' to point out the fact that Europeans are unconsciously using an incorrect alternative to what is the actual, English spellings of certain things?

It's exactly the same for British kids who are learning to read and write, I wonder if they are marked down at school for inadvertently spelling a word in the American form?

DMW · Feb 15, 2020

andyadcock said:
Why is it 'obnoxious' to point out the fact that Europeans are unconsciously using an incorrect alternative to what is the actual, English spellings of certain things?

It's exactly the same for British kids who are learning to read and write, I wonder if they are marked down at school for inadvertently spelling a word in the American form?

What makes "Gray" incorrect? It is the correct spelling in American English, just as the correct spelling in British English is "Grey". We don't own the language, even if it originated here, and there is no rule that requires Europeans to follow British spellings. Perhaps you should reflect on the discussion elsewhere, and the use of the Anglicised word "Jacana". presumably you are going to start using the correct Portuguese spelling and pronounciation?

What is obnoxious is to make disparaging references to American imperialism for what is a free bird recording application. Nobody is forcing anybody to use ebird: it's provided free by a US university, and even has British English as an option for those who can be bothered to use it.

Nutcracker · Feb 15, 2020

DMW said:
What makes "Gray" incorrect? It is the correct spelling in American English, just as the correct spelling in British English is "Grey".

And therefore, Gray Catbird, Grey Heron. It is incorrect to use 'gray' for a species which is British, and not American. That's what I object to.

And yes, when mentioning squirrels, I do use 'Gray Squirrel' - it helps show their invasive, non-belonging status in UK.

Gwynn · Feb 15, 2020

Nutcracker said:
Not for me. Presumably you have a personal account set to English, while they are spamming the rest of everyone and everything else with their default American imperialism. Teaching people in Portugal the wrong spellings for European birds. Printscreen:

I get Grey in both Chrome and Edge but Gray when using Firefox so maybe you should be blaming your browser.

TomDerutter · Feb 15, 2020

This argument keeps on circling.
The best way to solve it is letting the user decide which language he wants.
Exactly what ebird does...

Andy Adcock · Feb 15, 2020

DMW said:
What makes "Gray" incorrect? It is the correct spelling in American English, just as the correct spelling in British English is "Grey". We don't own the language, even if it originated here, and there is no rule that requires Europeans to follow British spellings. Perhaps you should reflect on the discussion elsewhere, and the use of the Anglicised word "Jacana". presumably you are going to start using the correct Portuguese spelling and pronounciation?

What is obnoxious is to make disparaging references to American imperialism for what is a free bird recording application. Nobody is forcing anybody to use ebird: it's provided free by a US university, and even has British English as an option for those who can be bothered to use it.

We'll have to disagree on that because if we don't 'own' our own language, who the hell does!

As for Jacana, were I in Portugal, I would defer to the local pronunciation but I'm not so I don't and the word isn't anglicised AFAIK, the characters used in the Portuguese, don't exist in English so would ordinarilly be meaningless to anyone reading them. It's just the way it's pronounced that has been Anglicised and ironically, the word was actually 'Portuguesed' from a Tupi word so what goes around, comes around.

Jim M. · Feb 15, 2020

RafaelMatias said:
I'm not so optimistic, although I agree that a very large percentage is correctly identified. I've found quite a few obvious mis-IDs (on various regions, including the US), and not always the IDs are corrected after you report them. Take a look at the list below, the Purple Heron photo shows a Grey Heron. I've reported this case perhaps 6 times already (since the list was posted), but nothing ever happened.
https://ebird.org/checklist/S54237191

First, that's nothing compared to the old IBC. There were people posting 100s of mis-ID'd photos that were way off, and I'd get nasty emails back if asked what was taking so long to correct them. There seemed to be one guy responsible for the whole site.

Second, it's up to the local eBird reviewer to correct. I don't know, but I'd guess there may not be local reviewers for some parts of Portugal. In any event, there's always going to be variation when it comes to local reviewers responsiveness, esp. because they are all volunteers.

DMW · Feb 15, 2020

TomDerutter said:
This argument keeps on circling.
The best way to solve it is letting the user decide which language he wants.
Exactly what ebird does...

:t:

Jim M. · Feb 15, 2020

Nutcracker said:
It is incorrect to use 'gray' for a species which is British, and not American. That's what I object to.

LOL. I didn't know Grey Herons were endemic to Great Britain. :eek!: Nor that they should be considered a "British" species when they existed before modern humans even existed on the planet. :eek!: Talk about imperialism! You lay claim to every species whose range happens to include Britain.

Paul Clapham · Feb 15, 2020

Nutcracker said:
And therefore, Gray Catbird, Grey Heron.

For what it's worth, the Howard and Moore checklist attempted to use British spellings for vernacular names of Old World species and American spellings for New World species. Like what you wrote there.

You might reasonably ask "But what about species which can't be classified as Old World or New World?" It turns out that there aren't many such species which have "gr[a/e]y" or "color" in their names. Two or three, I think.

fugl · Feb 15, 2020

Nutcracker said:
. . .while they are spamming the rest of everyone and everything else with their default American imperialism. Teaching people in Portugal the wrong spellings for European birds. Printscreen:

Your “argument” (such as it is) would make slightly more sense if the U.K. were still in Europe. Now that you’re out, it’s simply a case of “may the best orthography win”: the good old traditional English spellings preserved in the American version of our common language or the recently adopted frenchified spellings of the modern British dialect. “Centre”, “grey”, “honour”, c’mon, get serious!

[In writing the above, why I wonder did I have such a strong sense of deja vu? Could it be that we and others have run this subject to death in previous threads? Maybe so, maybe so.

]

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