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Fantasy Birding (1 Viewer)

msmith

Member
Heads up, birders: Fantasy Birding is now a thing, for those of us who've always wanted to do a Big Year but don't happen to be millionaires of leisure. The basic concept is that you pick a spot on the map to go “birding” the next day, then you get credit for anything real-world eBird users report within a 10-km radius for that period. And you get to watch from your couch as the birds roll in.

There's an ABA Fantasy Big Year already in progress, with more than 100 folks signed up (and some of us closing in on 300 species already). Given how successful it's been, we've got high hopes of taking it global. Come check it out, join us, and give us some feedback!

(Although it's turning out to be fun and addictive, the real motivation behind it was to develop an educational tool, as well as a way for those who lack ability or access to participate in our favorite sport. If you have any thoughts on how to further that goal, I'd love to hear them. And lastly: unlike fantasy sports, this is a totally non-commercial venture. So I'm promoting it here only to spread the merriment.)

Hope to see you there!
http://the-pigeon.org/fantasybirding
(And on Twitter @BirdingFantasy)

Cheers,
Matt Smith
 
Hi Matt,

The basic concept is that you pick a spot on the map to go “birding” the next day, then you get credit for anything real-world eBird users report within a 10-km radius for that period.

Sounds like a great way to have fun while exploring the extensive database! :)

I guess to get really good at it, one needs to learn a lot about birds and their migration behaviour.

I'd even say that the concept of "remote birding" has an old and honorable tradition in ornithology, if one considers the tracking of rings for scientific purposes its old-school variant ;-)

Regards,

Henning
 
I guess to get really good at it, one needs to learn a lot about birds and their migration behaviour.

I guess to get good at it, you need to know how many birders (and who) are going to be birding which spots. No point in choosing a place that might be great for birds, if all the birders are somewhere else! You just need to network, and get people to tell you where they're going to be :-O ;)
 
I guess to get good at it, you need to know how many birders (and who) are going to be birding which spots. No point in choosing a place that might be great for birds, if all the birders are somewhere else!
Just when I was going to chose somewhere off the beaten track in northern Siberia, which hasn't ever been visited by a birder . . . :-O
 
Guess it can't quite relate to an actual big year, for various reasons ...

Can paricipants hop around the globe at will, or should there be limits on 'travel' between sites/continents on consecutive days ... ?
 
With it being ABA-only for now, we were able to make some pretty sweeping assumptions re: travel (i.e. assuming you can always get from one place on the continent to another overnight). This would get stretched pretty quick if you were shuttling back and forth between, say, Key West and St. Lawrence Island, but it works OK given the trade-off that you're stuck in that 10 km circle at each spot. But if/when we make this global, we'll have to get smarter about building in travel time. There's also a Big Day version in the works which will involve planning a route between multiple hotspots.

I'm learning about strategy as I go. For rarity-chasing it's usually safe to assume that an eBirder will show up and at least look for the bird on your day. But what about birds like the Long-legged Buzzard (ABA-new) currently on St. Paul, AK? It's a brutal trip out there in Jan and no one's been out in over a week to check. So we fantasy birders may be out of luck, unless we get an insider tip or just camp out on the island all month. Then there's Flammulated Owls and the like which pose their own challenges. Thankfully there are scheduled tours for many of these now...

I'm at 297 species and 11 coded birds, which for what it's worth is right in line with what Olaf had at this stage in 2016. Does anyone know of anyone doing a real-life Big Year, apart from John Weigel?
 
Interesting take on this. With some friends I used to do Fantasy Birding using the league tables published one year in Birding World (or perhaps it was still Twitching then, can't remember. Choose ten, more points for higher division birds, top points if you pick a first and it turns up.... you get the general idea.

Risk assessment was key: how many 2/3 pointers would you choose to guarantee some sort of score before going top division to try for that ten pointer that is less than annual....

Trouble was the tables went out of date and I never updated them. A job for Mr Chapman perhaps.... ;)

Meanwhile if this American version was going to happen in the UK its quite simple: you need places where people will go, see everything and use e-bird, so pick Minsmere, define Shetland and Scilly as single points and away you go....

John
 
Been playing for 2 weeks now and just passed 300 species. It's stupidly addictive, especially the "live" popup feature! Can't wait to try my hand at a GBY - highly recommended :)
 
Quick update: I've just now rolled out the Global Big Year version of the game. It's very much in its testing phase, with the major caveat being that the uneven distribution of eBird users around the world makes results somewhat unpredictable. But please, have at it and send me your feedback on how to make it better! http://the-pigeon.org/fantasybirding
 
Matt or anyone, can you explain the updating system in regard to the timing? From what I can discern it seems to update at three roughly similar times of day, so I assume the program pulls a bucket of data all at preset times - is that correct? Also is the 24 hour set period based on the "day" of the location of your computer rather than the "day" of the field location? I ask because some birders, for example, have an owl from Minnesota listed on the same day as another owl from Arizona - I'm guessing this is a quirk of the time zones?
 
I'm available if anyone wishes me to boost their score ;) worldwide, on a non-profit basis :)

But then, isn't there a worry that if the competition gets serious, false records could be entered on ebird, then removed after the game? I'm not bothered about the integrity of the fantasy birding, but it looks like another potential source of hoaxing / stringing, or wishful identification if you are birding at your fantasy location! (I'm not too worried about this either, but imagine others would be?)

Fantasy football is different, the scoring is totally independent of the players. Here, not so, you can influence the results.
 
I'm available if anyone wishes me to boost their score ;) worldwide, on a non-profit basis :)

But then, isn't there a worry that if the competition gets serious, false records could be entered on ebird, then removed after the game? I'm not bothered about the integrity of the fantasy birding, but it looks like another potential source of hoaxing / stringing, or wishful identification if you are birding at your fantasy location! (I'm not too worried about this either, but imagine others would be?)

Fantasy football is different, the scoring is totally independent of the players. Here, not so, you can influence the results.

Just don't get it tbh, get out and see some real birds!
 
Just don't get it tbh, get out and see some real birds!

Agree, it's like these games on the phone where you have to keep a house and garden clean, fixing things as they break in the game.. All the while the real house and garden is getting totally neglected!
That's fantasy for you though!
 
I'm available if anyone wishes me to boost their score ;) worldwide, on a non-profit basis :)

But then, isn't there a worry that if the competition gets serious, false records could be entered on ebird, then removed after the game? I'm not bothered about the integrity of the fantasy birding, but it looks like another potential source of hoaxing / stringing, or wishful identification if you are birding at your fantasy location! (I'm not too worried about this either, but imagine others would be?)

Fantasy football is different, the scoring is totally independent of the players. Here, not so, you can influence the results.

But stringing, of course, is and has been a concern in eBird since long before fantasy birding. And has been a concern in listing and bird alerts many decades before listing and bird alerts.... and a concern in science and bird discovery/description before that! I would say sure birder integrity is a worry - the only difference with fantasy birding is that the stakes are so small.
 
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