Posted by Rock Jetty on January 01, 1970 at 00:00:00
"I am one of 4, and only 4, monitors for the FLRBA" - What happened to the rest of you? Okay, so, as Brian suggested earlier, one solution I see would be to create a filtering process where reviewers can exclude certain species for an "ABA rare bird" report while keeping those same species rare for Florida (or whatever region). In other words, here's an example: if a Mandarin Duck is seen in association with several Wood Duck in the L-31W spreader canal, perhaps that sighting does not get included in an "ABA rare bird" list (for your benefit) but still gets flagged. I use to be a reviewer for eBird (still am in fact, but I need to be better at it since others have picked up my slack) and I have to tell you that, as part of their email group, every day I see emails from reviewers all over the world discussing issues and ways to make eBird just that much better. I'm sure the "rare bird alert" topic has come up here and there; I'll look through the emails. Perhaps I can chime in and bring these issues you mentioned up. As for the birders who just report to eBird? Perhaps you can continue to ask birders to take the time to send a report to a listserv or one of the "Final Four". Don't know what else to tell you. -RJ