The answer to David's last question is "yes". The MOU offered its data to eBird in the early days of eBird, but they were not interested in it. We had a long conversation with them last year about the same topic. Again, eBird was not interested. Undoubtedly, there are good reasons why eBird is not able to use MOU data (the MOU typically doesn't track precise location - just to the county level; we don't track user effort in the field; we don't ask whether a checklist is complete or partial), so this is not in any way meant to be critical of their decision.
On the other hand, the MOU has data that eBird does not collect or is less interested in, such as a census of birds seen throughout a county in a day, or partial lists of species and counts at a location. All of this data, along with more complete censuses of specific locations, are distilled to create the seasonal reports that are published in each issue of The Loon. Paul Paul Budde MOU Seasonal Reports Editor Minneapolis, MN pbu...@earthlink.net -----Original Message----- From: Minnesota Birds [mailto:MOU-NET@LISTS.UMN.EDU] On Behalf Of David La Puma Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 2:33 PM To: MOU-NET@LISTS.UMN.EDU Subject: Re: [mou-net] Smartphone entry of sightings Carl et al, First off, I apologize for those on the MOU list trying to find out about birds and not caring one bit about this discussion. Feel free to delete this post now. I understand the desire to stay relevant, and it sounds like the MOU (hence the 'et al') has decided that managing these records is somehow key to maintaining themselves. I do get it. As a scientist though eBird is now the data source for researching phenomena like climate effects on bird populations, migration timing, etc. from local to the national (and soon global) scales. I would love to see MN's records included because otherwise they're a glaring hole in the dataset which does little to harm the research but does a great disservice to those trying to manage bird populations across the Upper Midwest. I'm sure the data you're collecting is extremely valuable and far exceeds the depth of data that eBird is able to handle. There are many ways to make your database/application/etc. function so that the pertinent data can be exported into eBird and there are going to be many records going into eBird from many people not affiliated with MOU that I'm sure you're going to want. Just because the MOU didn't say it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. So while I can understand your not wanting to adopt eBird (even if I disagree with it), I'm not going to let you discount my post (which was actually just an addition to Laura's post, noting the virtual-give-away of the application) as a 'violation of terms' when in actuality your reasoning was that you feel threatened by Minnesotans using eBird. I'm happy to share all of my Minnesota observations with the MOU; I can simply export my eBird data and send it to you... can your app do that? Good Birding David ________________________ David A. La Puma Postdoctoral Research Associate SILVIS Lab (http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/) University of Wisconsin, Madison Teaching/Research Profile: http://www.woodcreeper.com/teaching Websites: http://www.woodcreeper.com http://badbirdz2.wordpress.com ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
