"Toward an Ohio eBird"... .. thus have I phrased the few postings to this listserv in order to update the birding community on its progress ... as I know full well we are not there yet. eBird is a tool ... a vehicle for data sharing ... how well it performs is entirely up to those who make use of it, or not, as the case may be. The following is a preamble to my response to these criticisms. I first learned of eBird at a meeting of the Audubon Ohio IBA meetings of the technical committtee in 2001 when I had already been working on my own online database to complement my website. In 2002, I shelled out more than $1000 to get a 13 field database running. A trial quickbase collection of 1400 shorebird did get up and running but the 22,000 record database, representing the bulk of checklists off the Ohio-birds listerv for 1999-2002, was a couple of weeks away from its debut when Intuit opted to shut off access to the Internet and change its pricing structure. The database was sunk, and with it my will to continue with Aves.Net. Six months later, the ohio-birds listserv was turned over to the fledgling OOS. In early 2004, although skeptical, I was ready to try this thing called eBird. In Nov 2006, I was re-instated as state reviewer for Ohio eBird. I had resigned 2 years earlier infrustration after just 9 months ... eBird 1.0 was exceedingly rough and all too inflexible. When approached by newdirector Brian Sullivan in Feb 2006 about a short list of possible reviewers,I gave a sombre and fairly skeptical reply ... to his credit he took it in stride. That Nov, I took a look at the new eBird 2.0 and became sold on the future of eBird, if not the present. ... I was to be encouraged by the many updates, both the fixes and the features, that seem to come every few weeks, and have high expectations for eBird 3.0 currently under development. Much has been said recently of eBird and the listserv that I find dismaying. I spent 6 years defending the listserv as its creator/manager, I spent time defending The Ohio Cardinal as its editor, the Ohio Bird Records Committee as its Secretary, and so I hope you will forgive this briefing on the first 3 years of the effort to bring you an Ohio eBird. The first order of business in Dec 2006, and carried through April 2007, was to get in place checklist filters for the state. Cornell had a generic filter in place which frankly was laughable. One could report 30,000 Snow Geese and the filter would not catch it. To this day, generic filters rule several states. Only this past Nov did OK go from 4 large generic checklists to 16. Presently, Michigan is served, or not, as the case may be, by 3 generic filters (although more customization is underway). What is a checklist filter? For each species, for each month (in the future it will be weekly), there is a threshold number which will flag the observation for further review. DO NOT confuse these with the so-called filtering system of the Great Backyard Bird Count ... they have nothing in common but the Cornell University. How I develop a checklist filter I will reveal in another posting dedicated to the matter of vetting eBird. For Ohio, I planned out 22 checklists covering the 88 counties. One can create one for each county but I wanted something up and running quickly. Initially, I had created 14 (an average of 12hrs of research and tinkering for each one ) by April 07 covering all but 16 OH counties. Unique county avifaunas got their own checklist filter ... e.g. Lucas, Hocking, Adams. The remaining sets were broken out by physiographic region and with an eye to major species separations such the chickadee line. In April 2007, most of these initial checklist filters were brought online. A logistical snafu prevented a full implementation which was not realized until this past Sep. One of the beauties of eBird is that when a new filter is implemented, ALL existing eBird entries are parsed through the new filter, even if they had been parsed before. In this instance something like 2700 records were flagged ... I had my work cut out for me. Late in 2007, Oct-Dec, I completed 4 more checklists covering all but 6 counties ... by now every county near a population center was covered. In all, I logged 320 hrs for eBird that year, but figured the bulk of that was a one time deal ... more or less ... In 2007, data entry in Ohio took off, something that can be seen in the sample size reported across years in any species inquiry one may run. That spring generated 53,000+ records. Looking for something else to do, in 2008, I became focused on historical data. Over the course of the next 13 months, through March 2009, I entered some 1800 historical checklists, apart from an equal number of my own data back to 1978. The bulk of historical datum came from book sources from 1900- 1950 involvingnon-passerines, although with the Birds of Buckeye Lake I only got as far as thewaterfowl. I was not doing this for completeness ... at this rate 50 years would be insufficient. I only wanted enough sample data to offer up as exhibit A in my endeavour to encourage others to participate as an Ohio Archivist. I have since focused on data sets from 1997 to present, imagining that the subsequent Ohio checklist produced in eBird may encourage others to fill in the gaps without being overwhelmed by a blank slate. And so fleshing out the past 15 years are ... 60 (of 180) checklists from the ODNR Big Island WA survey (1998-99) 150 aerial surveys waterfowl surveys by ODNR ... late 90's 30 monthly surveys of Kellys I. ... various years 24 months of ONWR monthly surveys ... 90's to name a few ... Subsequently others have entered some large databases such the shorebird surveys of the Ottawa/Magee marshes by Mike Bolton and JohnSzanto back to 1989. Indeed, the International Shorebird Survey data for Ohio maintained by Manomet Bird Observatory is here back to 1978. Individuals such as David Brinkman in the southwest, John Yochum formerly of the far northwest, and recently, Charlie Bombaci of the Columbus area, have contributed massive databases. I also had the unexpected assistance of Gregory Bennett who has entered an untold number of checklists from ne. Ohio especially as relates to the waterfowl of the area. Exhibit A ... the Ohio checklist for 1990-present as generated from eBird http://tinyurl.com/yjusypm 2008 saw another 240 hrs logged for eBird. By then, I had developed a daily routine owing to the advent of the google gadget and Jack Siler's map feature high profile species flagged by eBird. Reviewers were encouraged to pick up the pace of review and I felt an obligation to answer that need for the birding community. For the past 24 months, provided I am near a computer, and it is not one of scheduled field days, I review eBird at 5:30 in the morning and usually again around 11pm. More on what that involves when I discuss the vetting of eBird in a separate post. 2009 started off somewhat lax, although the daily routine began picking up as the spring season alone approached 100,000 records. However, eBird, as has been correctly noted, is not without its glitches and much of the past year I spent ironing out those that I saw impacting Ohio (Brian Sullivan was very patient with me and work tirelessly on this). A major one involved the implementation of the filters I had supplied whereby about a dozen counties continued to operate under that generic filter that permitted so many erroneous records (Notably involving Franklin and Montgomery counties). This culminated in Sept wherein a completely revised set of the 18 filters were implemented now covering all but 6 counties. I anticipate placing the remaining 4 filters by this spring. And with the new set, most every eBird entry was once again parsed through the filters ... generating 1500 new records for review ... that was back in Sep. This left me with 180 hrs in 2009 ... or 240 if you throw in my Oct 2009 start-up with Oklahoma eBird. Why state my hrs ... because the matter of how much time is spent in data review was made an issue in a recent post. Also, in 2009, I got a helping hand in the form of Ken Ostermiller who has brought the backlog of hotspots (common points of data entry) up to date .... now about 750 sites ... the widespread adoption of which should go a long way to solving some of the geography issues. Ken has brought a naming standard to these sites, and working together we have been re-positioning those that were off kilter. [A number of those constructed pre- google proved to have coordinates incongruent with the google coordinates.] I thought to keep mum on all this ... afterall pretty boring stuff. ... but hope you can see that if you have a problem with the many of the details of eBird in Ohio, then you have a problem with me ... that's Ok ... I've been here all along to answer questions/criticisms ... there's no harsher critic than myself, and I could use all the help I can get. If you have an issue/question about a particular sighting, you can email me ... I made that very appeal to do so last year on the listserv If you wish to question a flagged item ... PLEASE use the comment box at the end of your checklist ... all I ask is that first you compare your report with the existing literature ... most especially the most up to date resources of Jim McCormac's Birds of Ohio (with its abundance chart) and the Ohio Bird Records Committee Checklist. Not too surprisingly, my filters don't depart too much from what one will find in those publications. I tweak a particular threshold perhaps 2-4 times a month, which I announce on my Facebook page. BTW, In the past 4 years, Ohio eBird has seen about a half million records entered into the database ... the vast majority covering that same period. Several hundred people participate, yet, of the 60 most active birders in terms of posting to the listserv, only about 20% participate. I suspect this discrepancy may be behind the recent back and forth that led to an unfortunate polarization of opinion on the listserv vs. eBird, when in reality they serve to complement each other, with little overlap of either function or mission. And if you indulge me a few more posts on the subject, I will provide my own characterizations of the limitations of eBird, the listserv, and the printed ornithological record. cheers Vic Fazio Shaker Heights, OH Regional Editor, North American Birds, OH-PA-WV State Reviewer, OH & OK, Project eBird. PI: Population ecology of the Black-capped Vireo, Fort Sill, OK 2007-2011 ______________________________________________________________________ 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]