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EuroBirdPortal – Live bird movements across Europe

eurobirdportal.org

51–60 of 68 posts

Re: EuroBirdPortal – Live bird movements across Europe

#51
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most of the German/British tourists seem to come during the summer though" That never made any sense to me. I also go rather go with the birds north in summer where it is cool and to spain in winter when it is still warm.

Well, your way makes no sense, I visit cold places when they're the warmest (their summer) and make sure to stay home in the summer when it's the warmest. Almost like some people prefer a "cold" life and others a "warm" one, and that's OK :) Not more than preferences, doesn't have to make sense.

"I visit cold places when they're the warmest (their summer) "

Which is also what I said?

But otherwise I do prefer a temperate life. Not too hot, not too cold.

Re: EuroBirdPortal – Live bird movements across Europe

#52
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, your way makes no sense, I visit cold places when they're the warmest (their summer) and make sure to stay home in the summer when it's the warmest. Almost like some people prefer a "cold" life and others a "warm" one, and that's OK :) Not more than preferences, doesn't have to make sense.

"I visit cold places when they're the warmest (their summer) " Which is also what I said? But otherwise I do prefer a temperate life. Not too hot, not too cold.

> Which is also what I said?

Well, "spain in winter when it is still warm" would not be "when that place is the warmest" in my mind. No foul, no harm though :)

Re: EuroBirdPortal – Live bird movements across Europe

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exactly freezing

In some places, it definitely is, we go skiing in Spain in the winter :) Besides, even around Barcelona we get snow every 6-7 years, although it's not like in the north of the world exactly.

That was true years ago, even in the Pyrenees (excluding the 2025/2026 exceptional winter) the snow is more lacking than present.

Re: EuroBirdPortal – Live bird movements across Europe

#54
post #34

Website doesn't really work properly. As soon as I change the birds and update, it shows 0 birds for entire timespan.

Could it be you are selecting birds that are not actually in Europe, let alone native, yet are still listed for some reason, e.g., the wild turkey and california quail? It makes me question the accuracy of the data if anything, especially since the Black Grouse also exists in places that are not mapped and I don’t see anything that could explain omissions, e.g., what the data is based on and how it is collected. My g…

> Could it be you are selecting birds that are not actually in Europe

I tried it for birds which I’m certain fly to Europe and also saw nothing. Also, when searching for the species, the image in the little preview was wrong (it was right in the main interface, though).

Re: EuroBirdPortal – Live bird movements across Europe

#56
post #35

Would be cool if the data was accessible easily via a public API, but from what it sounds like here that's not really the case https://www.eurobirdportal.org/ebp/en/help/#third_parties

Some of the bird data used is available in https://www.GBIF.org (website + APIs + data dumps) but not all of it. For a visualization like this, the place to start is probably the most recent monthly data snapshot which is available on AWS/Google/Azure's open data portals: https://www.gbif.org/occurrence-snapshots e.g. start with a DuckDB query: SELECT scientificName, individualCount, year, month, day, decimalLatitude…

This looks like a great resource, thank you for sharing!

Re: EuroBirdPortal – Live bird movements across Europe

#58
It's a little abstract, but the map showing swallows breaking out of the south of Iberia, then rapidly heading north is rather cool. You'll get a much better feeling for what this shows, if, early next spring, you find a natural barrier like a river or estuary. Then you can see birds pushing north and understand what these maps are really showing. For extra drama, hope for a strong headwind, and your admiration of what 20 grams of determination can do, will only increase.

Re: EuroBirdPortal – Live bird movements across Europe

#59
post #19

It's odd that you can see the borders between Belgium and France for various birds (like the swift and cuckoo), same for the border between Germany and Poland. I wonder why that is? There are no topological features defining these borders. Maybe the data is normalised in some way across countries?

If this is based on bird spotters, I'd say the national bird spotting organizations don't report or watch for the same birds.

That’s the more likely hypothesis, but I also wonder if different land management practices could be influencing a map like this. Agriculture in Poland is much more fragmented than in Germany - smaller fields of different crops, often separated by meadows and forests, creating lots of niches for biodiversity. In Western Europe you’re more likely to see giant, mechanised monoculture fields as far as the eye can see, leaving less space for agrarian-landscape wildlife.

Re: EuroBirdPortal – Live bird movements across Europe

#60
post #9

Anything can be represented by a dot on a screen, but not everything makes sense to be appreciated in this way.

(Shameless self-plug) I’ve been working on a far nicer way of appreciating bird detections: https://github.com/arnegiacomo/fugleramme

This is really pretty! Going to take a look at it later on.
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