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

Lynx joins with Cornell (1 Viewer)

Paul Clapham said:
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.
Click to expand...

Very sensible - that way fewer toes get trodden on :t:

The number of species in conflict is steadily declining too as genetics shows that many (most?) of the 'Holarctic' species are genetically more distinct than previously thought and are being split - the old Great Grey / Northern Shrikes and Common / Black Scoter name disputes now resolved that way. I suspect Common / Mew Gulls, Common / Red Crossbills, and White-winged / Two-barred Crossbills will be following soon . . .
 
TomDerutter said:
At least this is something that should improve, with 'Birds of the world' linked to the ebird/clements taxonomy..
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This is probably my biggest problem with the whole thing - moving to Clements I view as a negative. A positive would have been moving to IOC.
 
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.
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I agree that this issue has been flogged to death, but as a non-British European I find the statement above particularly ridiculous. Gray Heron is the wrong spelling in the U.K., and in any other country whose official language is British English. But for the life of me I can't understand why people in Portugal (or Italy, or Spain, or Hungary...) would have an obligation to choose British English over any other form of English. Surely it's a matter of personal preference? And all this in the name of anti-imperialism, too...3:)
 
cajanuma said:
I agree that this issue has been flogged to death, but as a non-British European I find the statement above particularly ridiculous. Gray Heron is the wrong spelling in the U.K., and in any other country whose official language is British English. But for the life of me I can't understand why people in Portugal (or Italy, or Spain, or Hungary...) would have an obligation to choose British English over any other form of English. Surely it's a matter of personal preference? And all this in the name of anti-imperialism, too...3:)
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And all this time, I thought we were 'all Europeans together' yet you choose the version of English from a far continent, I suggest a tarriff.......;)

As I stated before, I genuinely believe that most Europeans are probably not even aware of the differences or that they are using the American form?
 
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
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I checked the status of the report - it is pending reviewer action. If you have submitted this six times as you have said, I'm guessing the issue is the reviewer for that area of Portugal. As has been mentioned, the reviewers are all volunteers, and unfortunately some areas of the world have reviewers with more time/less workload than others.
 
Kirk Roth said:
I checked the status of the report - it is pending reviewer action. If you have submitted this six times as you have said, I'm guessing the issue is the reviewer for that area of Portugal. As has been mentioned, the reviewers are all volunteers, and unfortunately some areas of the world have reviewers with more time/less workload than others.
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Thanks, I imagined this could be the case. It's not that important, really. There were surely Purple Herons in the area on that day, and the observers know how to ID them (I'm sure). I believe this must have been an unintentional mistake or photo swap. Cheers.
 
HBW Alive to cease

The following notice now appears with each search.

HBW Alive will end its services on 11 May 2020 and the website will be closed definitively. Please visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of the World website, where the HBW Alive content has been incorporated. Thank you!
 
andyadcock said:
The following notice now appears with each search.

HBW Alive will end its services on 11 May 2020 and the website will be closed definitively. Please visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of the World website, where the HBW Alive content has been incorporated. Thank you!
Click to expand...

The end of an era, what sadness.
 
andyadcock said:
The following notice now appears with each search.

HBW Alive will end its services on 11 May 2020 and the website will be closed definitively. Please visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of the World website, where the HBW Alive content has been incorporated. Thank you!
Click to expand...

Will be greatly missed - so much better than Cornell's effort.
 
andyadcock said:
Is there still a free, basic version such as with HBW?
Click to expand...

Doesn't seem to be. I subscribed to HBW so have full access but if I log out for any species all you get is a half screen photo and a box telling you to subscribe.

BTW one of my biggest hates with the new site (after the taxonomy) is why make me scroll down half a screen to get past the title being a large photo. I want the detailed content not some ebird photo.
 
A real shame they sold out, it was a very useful resource even at the free level, especially where they laid out potential splits...............

Cornell won't get anything from me, would be interesting to try and find out the uptake from former HBW subscribers.
 
Last edited:
I am very sad to lose both HBW and the IBC, and to see all my records shoehorned into the Clements taxonomy; I did agree to migrate them to eBird but basically as a last resort, and I have not yet navigated the results much though I have a subscription until late 2021 so should I hope have full access.
I saw that 136 people had agreed to put their My Birding reports across, which seems very low, i wonder what the total number on My Birding was, and also how many subscribers HBWAlive actually had? I assume the economics of it all just did not stack up, such a pity as it was a fantastic resource, and with IBC included as well. I just hope Lynx can weather the virus disaster and keep up the publishing side of things, let's hope all that wonderful team are safe and doing OK.
Digressing slightly, the loss of Birding World back in 2014 was another blow, and neither that nor HBWAlive will ever be replaced with equivalents I fear.
 
sicklebill said:
I am very sad to lose both HBW and the IBC, and to see all my records shoehorned into the Clements taxonomy; I did agree to migrate them to eBird but basically as a last resort, and I have not yet navigated the results much though I have a subscription until late 2021 so should I hope have full access.
I saw that 136 people had agreed to put their My Birding reports across, which seems very low, i wonder what the total number on My Birding was, and also how many subscribers HBWAlive actually had?
Click to expand...

For what it's worth: if someone would like to get their data out of HBW Alive, and aren't eager to have it in eBird, I just put out a new version of Scythebill (14.8.4) with much better support for importing from HBW Alive: https://www.scythebill.com/download.html
 
So what will happen to all the QR codes in the Lynx published field guides? I just tried one from a sample plate and it redirected to the photo gallery of the species. Not sure where they went to beforehand? Can QR codes ever point to a replacement website or are they locked into one address forever?
 
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