eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database • Hacker News Board

Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database

#61

Post by salmo » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 9:28 PM UTC

esaym wrote: post #52

I never knew of this, totally going to sign up. Once upon a time, in the 1990's, I was in the 5th grade and the principal asked us (the class) to pull out our favorite book from our backpacks (she told us the day before to bring our favorite book) and wanted to hear the whole class reading out loud all at once. I pulled out my "Field guide to the birds of North America" [0] and started reading along with everyone els…

I used to keep mine in the kitchen where I could see my birdfeeder out the window when I was a kid. being in the SE US, we get a lot of migration crossing through and the seasonal variety is awesome.

I started using eBird when my daughter got interested in birds. But I fumble with it too much and went out to Amazon and got a new field guide just for quick access.

I could totally see her in the same scenario you were in :). Mostly now she gets strange looks when she refers to a female red shouldered hawk that hangs around the area as "Emma".

Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database

#62

Post by therealdrag0 » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

esaym wrote: post #52

I never knew of this, totally going to sign up. Once upon a time, in the 1990's, I was in the 5th grade and the principal asked us (the class) to pull out our favorite book from our backpacks (she told us the day before to bring our favorite book) and wanted to hear the whole class reading out loud all at once. I pulled out my "Field guide to the birds of North America" [0] and started reading along with everyone els…

Kids should be given more credit. When I was no older than that I would read encyclopedic books about guns and fighter jets. Not birds, but I don’t see how reading non-fiction early is anything but healthy.

Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database

#63

Post by andrewharvey » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

nickspacek wrote: post #45

diimdeep wrote: post #11

- 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.

Most of these platforms contribute their GBIF which aggregates it together. I contribute my sightings to iNaturaliast, but when I need the data for occurrences pull GBIF. I think this is perfect, because each site can compete on the best reporting interface, while not fragmenting data for data consumers.

Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database

#64

Post by arthurcolle » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

achr2 wrote: post #59

tony_cannistra wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's awesome, I had no idea that existed. I feel like there's a feather-ID app waiting to happen there.

Not hotdog.

"Feather, not feather"

It only does feathers...?!

Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database

#65

Post by onion2k » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

KineticLensman wrote: post #49

sjf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fa…

Up here in the North East near Sunderland we get a lot of Red Kites so I've learned to recognise them fairly well. Very hard to get a good picture though.

I spotted a Kestrel in a tree a couple of weekends back, that sat for a while and then dived to try to catch a small bird. It missed but it was great to watch. I managed to get a few decent photos - https://www.instagram.com/p/CHDt2HogIZj/?igshid=1n13m6e6a6e1...

Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database

#66

Post by esaym » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

therealdrag0 wrote: post #62

esaym wrote: post #52

I never knew of this, totally going to sign up. Once upon a time, in the 1990's, I was in the 5th grade and the principal asked us (the class) to pull out our favorite book from our backpacks (she told us the day before to bring our favorite book) and wanted to hear the whole class reading out loud all at once. I pulled out my "Field guide to the birds of North America" [0] and started reading along with everyone els…

Kids should be given more credit. When I was no older than that I would read encyclopedic books about guns and fighter jets. Not birds, but I don’t see how reading non-fiction early is anything but healthy.

Same here, though I never really paid attention to birds until my uncle bought me the field guide for some random reason when I was like 7.

From just thumbing through it a few times, I started recognizing birds outside which made me thumb through it more. I didn't have TV or video games back then so most of my after school time turned into thumbing through the book. I had alot of it memorized within a year it seemed.

From then on, any family trip to a new territory, I could name any birds that I hadn't seen in person before, or if nothing else, could quickly look it up.

Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database

#67

Post by harry-wood » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

Is it open data? (meaning open licensed)

https://ebird.org/science/download-ebird-data-products

  "eBird provides open data access in several formats" - sounds good!
  "to logged-in users" - less open but maybe fair enough if they're worried about hosting a heavy download.
  "after completion of a data request form" - starting to sound quite restrictive.

Anyone know what actual license & copyrights are applied to the data? Anyone filled out the form and received the data?

Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database

#68

Post by mcqueenjordan » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

therealdrag0 wrote: post #62

esaym wrote: post #52

I never knew of this, totally going to sign up. Once upon a time, in the 1990's, I was in the 5th grade and the principal asked us (the class) to pull out our favorite book from our backpacks (she told us the day before to bring our favorite book) and wanted to hear the whole class reading out loud all at once. I pulled out my "Field guide to the birds of North America" [0] and started reading along with everyone els…

Kids should be given more credit. When I was no older than that I would read encyclopedic books about guns and fighter jets. Not birds, but I don’t see how reading non-fiction early is anything but healthy.

http://fallibleideas.com/taking-children-seriously

Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database

#69

Post by mongol » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 11:45 PM UTC

navanchauhan wrote: post #51

Someone wrote: post #8

Similar: https://www.xeno-canto.org/ , a crowdsourced bird song database (over 600,000 recordings)

Would it be too difficult to apply transfer learning ( or create from scratch ), an ML model to train a bird-song recogniser? Edit: There are sonograms too ( https://www.xeno-canto.org/sounds/uploaded/ZWAQHOJFLZ/ffts/X... ). Could be done via image classification too. Interesting enough to do on a boring weekend, perhaps?

This has been done. But I can't say how easy it was. Check out the Android app BirdNet

Re: eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database

#70

Post by mongol » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 11:51 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #50

mongol wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes where I work (large ecommerce site), there is scheduled downtime once in a while. Not ideal if course, but continuous unlimited uptime at scale is not trivial.