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HBW Alive - My birding (1 Viewer)

Maffong

Well-known member
I'm not sure, if this is the correct forum, please move it, if another one fits better.

I'm using HBW Alive on a very regular basis, but only with a basic membership so far. However I've wondered if anybody with the supporting membership is using the My Birding feature. Is it easy to use? Do you find it to be helpful? Are there other websites, that are better for list keeping?
I've heard of Bubo.org, but never used it so far. Having a quick look at it, it seems to me that the My birding features will soon surpass this website, in addition to just looking more modern and easier to use. However as I said, I don't really know the website.
Does anybody know which other websites will be compatible with the My birding feature (so far only BirdBase it seems)? The ornitho family (ornitho.de, etc.) would be very nice for this!

On another note: How are the country lists in HBW Alive generated? E.g. for germany 459 species are displayed, officially 529 species have been recorded (Club300.de). It seems that many vagrants are excluded, but I can't see the the pattern here. For example I just came back from a trip to Peru. The field guide from 2010 still lists Southern Lapwing as very rare, with but a handful of sightings, HBW Alive doesn't even include it in their country list. However I just saw 5 birds there and other trip reports also mention them.
Furthermore, what classifies a bird as a vagrant and when is it considered a very rare migrant?

A lot of questions, I know. But maybe someone knows some answers?!

Cheers
Maffong
 
Maffong,
a couple of comments:
1) if you choose to use the "my observations" part of HBW alive, then you also need to be aware that you become married to the Birdlife taxonomy. That might end up being a significant drawback in the long run.
2) If I were to upload my observations anywhere, I would also want them to become valuable for citizen science as much as possible. For that reason, I have chosen Ebird.org as the only online site where I upload. I know you have traveled in the Americas, so Ebird would be a good option for you as well I would say. (and it is free)
3) Ebird uses the Clements/ebird taxonomy, so wouldn't that also be restrictive? Well, I combine it with the program Scythebill that lives on my computer. This is a free program that includes taxonomy for both Clements and IOC, so in that way, you have the choice on a daily basis. I have been really impressed with the responsiveness of Adam to proposals and questions I have had regarding this program. The integration with ebird happens in the way that each list you enter can be exported in ebird format, and each list you have in ebird can be imported into Scythebill.

Hope this helps
Niels
 
I've downloaded Scythebill and am uploading some data to it right now. Looks pretty good, I guess I'll connect my lists to ebird later, however I'm not really sure if that's going to work correctly as I have often just made a list of birds for a country and month, not a specific site and exact date.
Would still love to hear any opinions on the My Birding option, I think I could live with my data being with the Birdlife taxonomy, as long as I can check subspecies, which I know is planned for My Birding.

Where I live, in germany we use ornitho.de, which is part of a bigger family, which is the best place to upload your data here I think, as you get most information there plus your data has a cientific value there. I don't know a single german who uses Ebird however, I guess that is more for the americas. I would love it though if one day both databases would become connected (aswell as waarneming.nl, avesecuador.com and many other platforms)

Cheers Maffong
 
Would still love to hear any opinions on the My Birding option, I think I could live with my data being with the Birdlife taxonomy, as long as I can check subspecies, which I know is planned for My Birding.


Maffong,

Provided that you can identify the subspecies involved (in the field I mean), which will be especially problematic and arguably sometimes impossible in cases where several subspecies might winter in the same general region, then you can indicate the taxon involved within the My Birding part of HBW Alive. This functionality has been available for quite some time already. When you click on a given species (in preparing a list) you will automatically have the option (for polytypic species) to add the subspecies involved based on a dropdown list (showing ranges as given in HBW). However, it is optional, i.e. you can create an entry for the species concerned whether or not you can or want to specify the subspecies that you (believe you) saw.

If you do indicate a subspecies for all your records, then for passerines their taxonomy (and your lists) will be automatically updated after the publication of the second volume of the Lynx/BirdLife checklist.

If you don't, then for all relevant species that are eventually affected by taxonomic changes in the just-mentioned work, My Birding will automatically assemble a list of (which species did you see?) queries for you, and you can modify entries manually (or not, depending on your predilection).

There is a quite a lot of information concerning additional features that have recently been added to My Birding in the latest newsletter (http://www.hbw.com/sites/default/files/newsletter/HBW%20Alive%20Newsletter%20-%20No.%2017.html).

I am not at all familiar with the other systems that people have spoken about and, as I work for Lynx, I am to some extent biased, but personally speaking My Birding seems to be quite a powerful and attractive means of keeping bird records. I cannot, however, comment on how easy it is to adapt records created in another system to HBW's, irrespective of (obvious) taxonomic differences, although I believe the system can accept inputs from some of these already.
 
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Another point relevant to one of your queries. In My Birding, you have the option when creating a list (either of birds already seen or for example a field checklist for a forthcoming trip) to a region or country, to include or not to include vagrants. Nevertheless, even if you do opt to include, I confess I have noted discrepancies, i.e. known vagrants for a given country not appearing on a list, but at least when preparing a list for a trip or day's birding you will have the option within the software to manually add a species not on the list.

Finally, one other comment about subspecies. If you only complete one list for a given trip, as I believe you mentioned that you do, then do note that the dropdown list I talked of above will only permit you to electronically add one subspecies per entry. If you observe multiple subspecies of the same species on a given trip (highly likely in countries with a complex biogeography or on trips where you cover a large geographical area), then you would need either to use a different modus operandi (e.g. prepare separate lists for each site that you visit) or to use the comments box for each species to note additional subspecific taxa that you observed. I believe that if you pursued the latter option that would mean that the system would be at least partially unable to modify your lists based on any changes to the system's taxonomy. That might or might not be a disadvantage?
 
Finally, one other comment about subspecies. If you only complete one list for a given trip, as I believe you mentioned that you do, then do note that the dropdown list I talked of above will only permit you to electronically add one subspecies per entry. If you observe multiple subspecies of the same species on a given trip (highly likely in countries with a complex biogeography or on trips where you cover a large geographical area), then you would need either to use a different modus operandi (e.g. prepare separate lists for each site that you visit) or to use the comments box for each species to note additional subspecific taxa that you observed. I believe that if you pursued the latter option that would mean that the system would be at least partially unable to modify your lists based on any changes to the system's taxonomy. That might or might not be a disadvantage?

In all fairness: those limitations would likely also be present in other systems for recording observations.

Niels
 
The problem I have currently, is that I don't have the time to upload all my observations made in the past 5 years (and which are already uploaded on other platforms) again. As for the future of course I would make detailed lists for all the days...
Thanks a lot already for the input so far.
At GMK: Do you know on which basis the species lists for the countries are assessed? I could help to complete the lists at least for a few countries...

Maffong
 
Maffong,

I do not know how the lists for a given country are put together, nor do I know which other systems might become compatible with Alive in the future (for now, it is still only Birdbase). But you can use the Contact us link (under Help at the foot of the main page: http://www.hbw.com/) to ask such questions and be answered by someone who knows.

But, to provide some additional information with respect to vagrants. I've entered more than 320 lists to date and had to manually input vagrants about three times, so this isn't a big problem. I also double-checked your Peru example. I asked the system to produce a checklist of the birds of Peru including vagrants, and Southern Lapwing appeared on it, without my having to input the species manually.
 
Arnau Bonan, who is at least partially responsible for developing My Birding and actually knows how the technical side of this operation works, has provided some follow-up information on current and short-range planned developments to the system, which will hopefully interest Maffong and other users (be they potential or “live”).

In addition to country- or island based lists, those for several territories or nation states have been added recently: these include Sabah, Kalimantan, Brunei, West Papua, and the Northern Solomons.

Country lists are being updated based on the First country reports section in the Newsletter, but this is an area where changes are fast-paced (and many), so feedback from users is important. I already indicated in an earlier message how you can get contact the right people (posting a message on BF is not the best way!).

The import system for My Birding is also subject to ongoing development. Arnau reports that it will soon be possible to import lists from excel files, as well as from Ornitho (a system used in Europe, though I confess I am not familiar with it, perhaps reflecting many Britons’ ambiguous notion of what it means to be European!) and from eBird (much more widely known and used, I suspect).

Three other important improvements due reasonably soon in My Birding are as follows:

(1) printable checklists (rather than electronic use only).

(2) generation of more maps from users’ data, e.g. like that already available for first sightings around the world (http://www.hbw.com/tutorial/my-first-sightings-around-world).

(3) all of the information generated from your data shown as a side bar on the relevant species account page. Improvements along these lines have already been made (that even someone as non-technical/Luddite as I can easily notice) but many more are in the works (http://www.hbw.com/tutorial/my-birding-box-species-accounts).

The best way, of course, to keep up with these developments is via the monthly newsletter (see one of my earlier messages).
 
Thank you very much for your effort! The information about what's coming can also be found here: http://www.hbw.com/mybirding so that wasn't new to me, but the fact, that ornitho and ebird will be connected make this extremely interesting for me and I think as soon as this is done I will change my subscription to supporting. Also the subspecies recognition will be a great feature!
 
Hi, just saw from the HBW newsletter that they put a manual on Mybirding online: http://www.hbw.com/tutorial/my-bird...er&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter20

Should give some info on what it can do and what not.

Still work in progress it seems, e.g. "You can import your data from Bird Base and we are working on the tools to do so from Excel files, eBird, “Ornitho” databases and BirdTrack."

I'll wait a bit more before giving it a try. I really like the idea having my listing combined with the HBW resource... But for the moment, very happy with Scythebill.
 
Thanks for the info Dalat. I also got the newsletter and just had a quick view at the tutorial. It looks really good in my opinion, I like especially all the statistics they have included. It looks like they really thought everything through. When itis finally possible to import the data from ornitho and ebird (and possibly Scythebill?) I guess I'll give it a shot and upgrade to supporting. Also the bibliography is becoming more and more interesting for me. Could somebody comment if and how well that feature works? Do I understand that correctlythat you get access to the whole literature cited?

Maffong
 
Do I understand that correctlythat you get access to the whole literature cited?

I understand that access of the full publication only if available for free download on the internet, which probably excludes a whole lot of publications from scientific journals.

http://www.hbw.com/pricing "View more information, tracking references to their source (when available on the internet)."

Grüsse, Florian
 
I understand that access of the full publication only if available for free download on the internet, which probably excludes a whole lot of publications from scientific journals.

http://www.hbw.com/pricing "View more information, tracking references to their source (when available on the internet)."

Grüsse, Florian

Could somebody with the supporting membership tell us if that really only includes free publications or if you also get access to papers you would normally have to pay for? Because if the first is the case I'm not really sure what the big advantage is. I could just google them myself...?!

Maffong
 
Hi Maffong,

I've got a supporting subscription and have just had a dig around in the bibliography section of a few species.

It looks like it only takes you to the freely available links on the internet.
I can find nothing to suggest that the links are in any way 'private' to HBW supporting subscribers.

A lot of the links just take you to a page saying, 'not currently available online'. Which is fair enough if the publications have not be digitized.

Let me know if you want to check a bibliography of a particular bird or anything like that..

Kind regards,
Oliver
 
Why should I pay more?

As an individual who has bought all the volumes of HBW and the extant volumes of HMW I am not a subscriber to the web version. Reason? I feel my outlay of over £2,000 so far should justify the inclusion of a free subscription to the online service.
Don't get me wrong though - the printed volumes are among my most favoured books.
I just wish Lynx would consider the private buyer in this regard.
 
For me, never having bought any of the books, the subscription to this wonderful resource feels like a bargain. I would probably feel like you if I had previously paid hundreds of € (or £) already for the books...
 
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