The last time I dared to suggest in public that eBird might not be the
coolest thing since sliced bread, I got lengthy e-mails (just two, but
over 7000 words in all!) from folks who work for eB, so I know what I'm
in for.   But, really...
        Perfectly nice innocent people are getting the notion that eBird is the
e-ultimate e-repository of ALL bird records, and the only place to go.
After all, they give you free listing software, membership in an army of
reporters for a worthy cause, your name on various lists, nifty software
to work with, so why wouldn't everyone belong?  And they do indeed have
some very smart people to offer advice and perspectives. You can also
persuade yourself from eBird that you know who has the biggest life list
for Ohio, as well as for Dogface County, or Sundown Park. You hardly
need anything else in the way of data when you nap in the arms of
eBird...or so you hear.
        Now I see that eBird has been rejecting published records from the
past, actually reaching back to rejudge accepted history. Increasingly,
it is arrogating the data and expertise to itself. Example: I have been
working on Franklin County birds the last couple of years, and accept
records here for 337 species (specifying 27 others not accepted because
of inadequate evidence, status as unestablished or unaccepted splits,
hybrid forms, etc.), but eBird has only 294, if anyone cares. Accurate
or not, what does this ancient history have to do with eBird's mission?
        I think eBird is a good idea.  Maybe not so revolutionary in terms of
results as many assume, but a good idea. It should be gathering as many
reliable data as it can to demonstrate changes in bird populations
across the map and over time. That's important, so recruiting and
building team spirit seem appropriate, hence all the cool electronic
gizmos and a spirit of competition to go with cooperation.
         But should eBird be a social organization, a cult, or a
life-style? It needs, more than anything else, to produce copious and
reliable data. Why should we eagerly look forward to everything we'll
know after a century of gathering bird data, when we already have more
than a century behind us?  A million or so birds are banded every year
in North America--is eBird incorporating these records into its
database?  How about the millions from the old phenology project? A
century or more of CBCs? How about the voluminous data in the many state
and provincial periodicals, and other publications of the past?
        eBird is not adequate, on the spot, to scrutinize and 'accept'
occurrences of rarities. Nor should it. Rarities are rare--they are
outliers, and data from them is far less significant in terms of eBird's
major function, which is, frankly, counting robins. Science needs to
know about the robins a lot more than whether Dogface County had four
ruffs or three over the last century. Robins are less glamorous perhaps,
but their data are far more persuasive and significant in the big
picture.  Leave the rarities to the reviewers who've always dealt with
them. What's the hurry, and why second-guess?
        There are plenty of venues---state/provincial journals, national
publications like N. Am Birds, records committees, publications in
biological journals, and so on--where the oddities and outliers have
been kept track of, along with lots of other data. What but arrogance
would lead anyone else to do so? Counting the robins, year after year,
is the strength of eBird. It is an important mission. But hardly the
only one.
Bill Whan
Columbus

______________________________________________________________________

Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society.
Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list.
Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/.

You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS
Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]