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Posted by Bill Pranty on 14:19:33 03/07/07
In Reply to: eBird data posted by Robin Diaz
Good afternoon all,
Put me in the "bad-data-are-a-concern" category.
Like all the other Internet birding lists, the TAS Bird Board is unmoderated. Which, among other things, means that unquestionably wrong to strongly suspicious birds are reported frequently -- check out the Largo Ivory-billed Woodpeckers for an example of the former, or the Naples Bananaquit (or last month's "Mountain Bluebird") for an example of the latter (no offense meant to any of the reporters).
I was initially involved with eBird in Florida, but dropped out after a while. There definitely are "flags" in the database for megararities, but (so far as I know) not for "less-than-mega" rarities. So one could not report 10 Black Noddies at Tallahassee without a flag going up, but I'd be surprised if a Miami-Dade Golden-crowned Kinglet was flagged, especially in an invasion year as far south as Pinellas County.
I could be wrong, but I do know that the database is massive and therefore the ability to properly vet all questionable reports must be extremely time-consuming -- and is best performed by locals.
Editing the data for Florida's ~62 Christmas Bird Counts -- which cumulatively total a bit fewer than 8000 observations -- takes me 6-8 weeks (working 1-2 hours per day)
Consider that the eBird database for Florida during fall 2006 (1 Aug-30 Nov) contains 39,462 reports (I have the database in front of me) -- and then imagine how much work it would be to contact _every single observer_ of _every_ rare species -- and you can begin to imagine that the eBird database cannot possibly be vetted properly.
I agree that eBird is a great idea, but it is founded on -- IMHO -- an untenable principle: that EVERY OBSERVER in North American can correctly identify EVERY BIRD encountered EVERY TIME.
No offense intended to anybody.
Best regards,
Bill Pranty
Bayonet Point, Florida
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