• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Lynx joins with Cornell (1 Viewer)


Look at the highlighted words in the quote, it's clear what I mean.

There was also speculation as to what would happen to established nomenclature, Longpsur, Loon, Jaeger et al with the IOC already prefering American names as standard for many species which are not unique to the Americas.
 
Last edited:
I agree it's going as expected i.e. a US focus on everything.

You can complain about that or you can ask yourself what the alternative would have been: Lynx finding out they were losing too much money and just closing down the whole thing?

Secondly, when you are logged into ebird, you can set your preferences to show bird names in many other versions, including UK-English. You could quietly hope that a similar process could be instigated for whatever other parts of their site you would like to see?

Niels
 
You can complain about that or you can ask yourself what the alternative would have been: Lynx finding out they were losing too much money and just closing down the whole thing?

Secondly, when you are logged into ebird, you can set your preferences to show bird names in many other versions, including UK-English. You could quietly hope that a similar process could be instigated for whatever other parts of their site you would like to see?

Niels

That isn't my complaint! It's the taxonomy I don't like and that has nothing to do with language preference - Clements moves very slowly on American taxa but far slower on non-American taxa. It seems to be very much deferring to regional authorities which is fine for Nth/Sth America or even Europe - in Asia that's effectively meaningless and that's where I mostly spend my time. I'd rather HBW or IOC being too aggressive in some cases but far more often being right than Clements with their approach. I want detailed sub-specific details which is what I used HBW for - I can decide the species taxonomy against that. eBird refuses to allow me to consider subspecies in most cases if they don't believe I can identify them - that is irrelevant I don't want to know what is visibly identifiable (and I don't agree with their details) but give full details irrespective.

The second part is as the recent complaint about advertising wtf should I have to opt out of emails about some discussion in San Diego or about id'ing US warblers. There are far more interesting discussion topics I'd be interested in and if they want to engage me know what I'm interested in. I don't see any indication that is going to be forthcoming.

Yes Lynx may not be able to make money out of their offering - so be it. I'm paying and if not enough are I can't do much about it but Cornell need to consider whether HBW subscribers like me will see enough value to pay them! If I lose the details I like from HBW Alive (and btw I don't use their taxonomy I prefer IOC but I use the sub-specific descriptions) then Cornell will lose that subscription value,

At this stage I'm not making a conclusion but my customer experience has not been improved!
 
At this stage we cannot know for sure, but my expectation is that the HBW alive information including subspecies information will continue to be available. The resources that are mentioned together with it such as the BNA certainly have subspecies descriptions. Due to those resources being written with the Americas in mind they do not help you, but they would on a visit to this part of the world.

By the way, 3/4 of the changes at the last update to Clements were non-American.

Niels

Niels
 
By the way, 3/4 of the changes at the last update to Clements were non-American.

Yes the recent update was an improvement on the past!

BTW the taxonomy difference even after the last update is approx 50 on my list. So even if you believe IOC is too aggressive with their splits - the difference is very significant. It's not about my list size - if I could see Clements justifications why they don't support them all then I'm ok (if I agree with the justification :) it's my list!). Whilst I have no doubt some of those IOC splits will get lumped eventually there is also plenty of regional research which will add even more splits far outwaying the lumps once eventually making their way through research processes!
 
Last edited:
Up to this point, I have not paid anything extra, I see the same HBW Alive as before, I have got access to BNA, of which I am happy, and I have got one or two emails advertising bird watching courses in California. Maybe in the future everything is Americanized and ruined, but I will start complaining only then.
 
It's true. Almost nothing has changed, the transition isn't even completed and everybody is already whining. Reading the bitter comments here, one could think that brits are being bullied by Cornell...
Personally, I'm sad that HBW Alive is going to disappear, on the other hand I have great hopes that Birds of the world will be equally as great. It's not like HBW Alive had all the right answers to everything, take "Orange-breasted Bush-robin" for example (Red-flanked Bluetail), but surely we're now advancing towards an improved single list of bird names. No one will stop you from using local names even after that. IOC and Clements are also already getting closer and closer to each other with each update (We're at 83,4% concordance currently)
 
I am hopeful it will all work out, but sad to see my My Birding lists swapped into Clements taxonomy, but there we are. A shame the video archive is going to disappear, must be very frustrating for those with thousands of items, I am upset I am going to lose my 92.
 
I am hopeful it will all work out, but sad to see my My Birding lists swapped into Clements taxonomy, but there we are. A shame the video archive is going to disappear, must be very frustrating for those with thousands of items, I am upset I am going to lose my 92.

is it? cannot remember reading that

Niels
 
Yes the recent update was an improvement on the past!

BTW the taxonomy difference even after the last update is approx 50 on my list. So even if you believe IOC is too aggressive with their splits - the difference is very significant. It's not about my list size - if I could see Clements justifications why they don't support them all then I'm ok (if I agree with the justification :) it's my list!). Whilst I have no doubt some of those IOC splits will get lumped eventually there is also plenty of regional research which will add even more splits far outwaying the lumps once eventually making their way through research processes!

As already mentioned, we'll likely see list authority homogenisation soon. That affects sci names not popular names which can be country specific.
 
Look at the highlighted words in the quote, it's clear what I mean.

There was also speculation as to what would happen to established nomenclature, Longpsur, Loon, Jaeger et al with the IOC already preferring American names as standard for many species which are not unique to the Americas.

'But the emails?'

FAQs here:

https://birdsoftheworld.org/faqhbwinst

As already mentioned you can view vernacular names in whatever language you choose. I'd imagine that there will be an initial Americas first bias however given that information in BNA and parts of NBO is more comprehensive than HBW which is stated as the backbone of BOW, i.e. you get all the HBW content and then a lot more. The goal is obviously to then build those accounts...
I'd don't think you'll be forced to wear one of those binocular harnesses or use an Audubon Bird Call squeaker or refer to Calidris sandpipers as peeps however.
 
From that FAQ:

HBW Alive will become the backbone of Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s new Birds of the World in early 2020. The renowned Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW Alive) content has transitioned from Lynx Edicions (Lynx) to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (the Cornell Lab), where this exciting new platform is under development.

I'm really pleased to hear that, because HBW is an excellent resource and I refer to it frequently.

However the taxonomy used in HBW is significantly different from the taxonomy used at Cornell -- everybody reading this thread knows that already. So I'm curious where they are going to go with that. It's certainly an opportunity for them.
 
From that FAQ:

Cornell said:
HBW Alive will become the backbone of Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s new Birds of the World in early 2020. The renowned Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW Alive) content has transitioned from Lynx Edicions (Lynx) to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (the Cornell Lab), where this exciting new platform is under development.

I'm really pleased to hear that, because HBW is an excellent resource and I refer to it frequently.

However the taxonomy used in HBW is significantly different from the taxonomy used at Cornell -- everybody reading this thread knows that already. So I'm curious where they are going to go with that. It's certainly an opportunity for them.
"under development" sounds very ominous . . . will the HBW text be preserved verbatim, or will it all be changed from centimetres into inches and grammes into ounces, and so on, just to suit American imperial tastes? That would be a ghastly retrograde step, but entirely typical (I've seen it happen elsewhere, many times).
 
Good point about metric measurements, let's hope it stays as is but I am resigned to losing quite a few non-Clements splits. I heard back from Cornell and the video archive will be conserved, so I am not losing my 92 items, which is very pleasing. Be good to be able to upload videos to eBird too, not currently possible
 
"under development" sounds very ominous . . . will the HBW text be preserved verbatim, or will it all be changed from centimetres into inches and grammes into ounces, and so on, just to suit American imperial tastes? That would be a ghastly retrograde step, but entirely typical (I've seen it happen elsewhere, many times).

I presume you are joking now?

Are you seriously suggesting that a scientific endeavour will use imperial measurements?

Maybe read some of BNA first?

https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/btbwar/introduction

Specifically:

https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/btbwar/appearance

As for the text, of course it won't be frozen in time. In the same way as HBW Alive is dynamic....
 
I presume you are joking now?

Are you seriously suggesting that a scientific endeavour will use imperial measurements?
I wish I could say I was, but - as mentioned - it would be far from the first time that I have seen US sites take information with originally metric data, remove it, and replace with imperial stuff.
 
Warning! This thread is more than 4 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top