For Swedish wildlife watchers there's https://www.artportalen.se/ which has been around for about 12 years or so. It has a dedicated section just for ornithology/birdwatching, but also offers reporting of any species. The site is backed by Naturvårdsverket, the Swedish environmental protection agency.
eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
41–50 of 88 posts
Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
#42The world of bird sighting is interesting. I have a friend who runs a cruise expedition company in New Zealand. They run trips in the south seas (Antarctica) as well as the North (Russia, Japan) but they have to reposition their ships between seasons. Those repositioning trips are 3-4 weeks at sea with little-to-no land in sight. So what they did to make money was to sell heavily discounted seats to bird watchers bec…
The night sky must be great too! Too watch the stars. Too bad it will move with the waves
Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
#43This looks so cool. I am casually interested in bird watching, especially being able to identify them via their songs. However the moment I click to "explore" it requires a login. Yet-another login to manage before I am get to sample the data... window closed. I am not their target demo anyway.
> Yet-another login to manage before I am get to sample the data... window closed. I am not their target demo anyway. My understanding is that eBird is only for recording sightings, and not for doing identifications. For identifications you want the Merlin app/page[0]. I don't think eBird/Merlin distinguish that clearly enough. But I think what you're looking for at this point is Merlin, and not eBird. [0] https://ww…
I find it frustrating that Merlin and eBird don't integrate as well as one would expect
Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
#44The world of bird sighting is interesting. I have a friend who runs a cruise expedition company in New Zealand. They run trips in the south seas (Antarctica) as well as the North (Russia, Japan) but they have to reposition their ships between seasons. Those repositioning trips are 3-4 weeks at sea with little-to-no land in sight. So what they did to make money was to sell heavily discounted seats to bird watchers bec…
The night sky must be great too! Too watch the stars. Too bad it will move with the waves
When you get your sea legs, or a scopolamine patch the stars stop spinning.
For cameras or telescopes, there has to be some kind of stabilization bases out there.
Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
#45- https://mushroomobserver.org - crowdsourced database for mushrooms. - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations - plants and animals.
I love iNaturalist and am sometimes blown away by the automatic suggestions. I use it for birds, plants, bugs, mushrooms, trees, everything. Some time ago they added audio clips as well. It would be great to see more of these open communities inter-connected and sharing their databases.
Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
#46This looks so cool. I am casually interested in bird watching, especially being able to identify them via their songs. However the moment I click to "explore" it requires a login. Yet-another login to manage before I am get to sample the data... window closed. I am not their target demo anyway.
eBird is a great resource for the casual birder looking to learn more. When I started, I used it to find out where to go to look for birds and what birds to expect once I got there. It also is an excellent listing tool, and listing in eBird helps you identify by knowing what's likely to be seen. As you get more into it, you'll be really glad you kept early lists in eBird. Push past the registration, it's worth it!
Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
#47I worked on the original eBird team back in the early 2000's. Seeing this post brought back so many memories of working very closely together on a small person team. At the time eBird was only a handful of people. The Lab of Ornithology continues to do amazing work. I'm happy they are thriving.
Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
#48https://observation.org/ has existed for a few years. It's been used for all kinds of observations ranging from plants to birds.
Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
#49I do a bit of wildlife photography in my spare time (follow me on Insta for pictures of British birds and occasionally my cat - https://instagram.com/onion4k ). Recognising birds is surprisingly hard. A lot of them have very subtle differences that can't be spotted easily. For example, telling the difference between a common Thrush[1] and a much less common Redwing[2] is a real challenge. It's a fun and challenging p…
Offf, as some one coming from the UK, thrush vs redwing is not even in the difficult category... Try little brown birds of which there are many, they are basically indistinguishable, they love to hide, so notorious they even get their own wikipedia page[1]; or gulls, also many species, as well as several variations of adolescent plumage; or raptors which in the UK you pretty only see as a silhouette while they are hu…
Raptors are really interesting from a recognition perspective. Since volunteering at the Hawk Conservation Trust in the UK I've learnt lots of useful tips that apply even when you can just see a little silhouette. For example:
- Falcons have relatively scythe-shaped wings while Hawks have more rounded wings relative to Falcons
- Hawks and Eagles have more pronounced 'fingers' at the ends of their wings relative to Falcons
- Buzzards and Kites: Buzzards are more stubby and have a diamond shaped tail; Kites have longer wings and a forked tail
- There are similar differences with respect to the length of the tail.
Some raptors have diagnostic flight patterns: Kestrels hover in place, Kites perform extremely dynamic acrobatics, especially in groups. Even when you can see the plumage, it doesn't always help - there can be significant differences between juveniles and adult males and females.
Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
#50I have a technical question related to this post. On the front page of the site there's a prominent announcement that the site will be offline for 48 hours for a database migration. Is this fairly common, and is this reasonable? I've made some small sites but nothing that's ever gained real traction. I've always told myself that if I build something that starts to take off I should learn to do maintenance without int…
It would not be reasonable for a commercial operation that makes money every minute around the clock. But they also need to build their systems differently to avoid downtime for reasons such as these. For a non-commercial organization, it can be different. It all depends on the value and cost of uptime/downtime.
There are even commercial operations who can have scheduled downtime.
Last time I wanted to check on my savings account, the bank was doing maintenance all Sunday.