This email got a little long -- my apologies! :-) I'm an avid eBird user, and very much appreciate Gary's newly found enthusiasm and getting "all jazzed up" for eBird! It really is an excellent project and one that has greatly enriched my own birding activities. The great scientific and conservation value (e.g., a list of publications that made use of eBird can be found here <http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about/publications/>) is also a huge plus.
In short, I'm a big fan and supporter of eBird! But, that said, I'm not convinced that a CO eBird portal is worth the effort. Instead, the existing webpage doesn't need to be tailored to CO so much as we need to help CO birders find out how they and their birding activities can benefit from using eBird, AND how scientist and conservationists can benefit from their birding activity through eBird. Here's the longer version... As Joey and Rachel have pointed out, it does seem like such an effort would be putting the wagon before the horse (what are the specific needs that we have -- what problem -- to which an eBird portal is the best solution?). The existing email lists, CFO website, and ColoradoCountyBirding.org website (which, I agree, is the best state-level birding website out there!) really do provide local and out of state birders with a wealth of information and expertise about birds and birding in CO. So I'm just not seeing the benefit that a CO ebird portal would provide. But, I am excited about seeing the continued rise of eBird use in CO, and I even have a few ideas for how to help that process along. I've managed to channel my eBird enthusiasm into giving talks/workshops aimed at getting more birders to use ebird (e.g. for trip planning, education, list management, etc) and to get more birders contributing to eBird (birding and submitting observations in ways that are scientifically/statistically valuable). Those efforts also include co-moderating the eBird Rarity Group <https://www.flickr.com/groups/ebird/> on Flickr, and engaging in other online discussions (e.g. via Facebook) to help new eBird users learn how to efficiently incorporate eBird into their birding activities in a way that benefits everyone. I'm originally from Pueblo, but as I currently live in Ohio I don't think I've (yet) had the pleasure of giving such talks in Colorado -- perhaps I need to change that! :-) Ultimately, we can leverage the scientific, conservation and yes even the "sporting" value of eBird (for those of you who maintain a list or two and/or enjoy friendly birding competitions) by simply increasing the number and quality of observations submitted to eBird via the CO birding community -- including historical records! Many of you will be glad to know that, after a quick check of a few species, it does seem the birds in the CBRC database ARE all in the eBird database. That's excellent! But how many of us still have notebooks full of old checklists gathering dust? Much of that information hiding among the pages of those notebooks ALSO needs to find it's way into the eBird database. Despite the size of the eBird database, there are still a lot of missing data! To see for yourself, click the following link to view a map of eBird observations in CO (click individual squares to see the species totals reported in that square). http://ebird.org/ebird/hotspots?env.minX=-109.060807&env.minY=36.992231&env.maxX=-102.041976&env.maxY=41.005611&yr=all&m= You can see that there are still plenty of data gaps, as far as spatial coverage, and even more gaps can be found when you start looking at different times of year. Many of these gaps in the data could no doubt be filled by trips we (collectively) have already taken. So for me, the key to improving eBird use and usefulness in CO is education and outreach, or as I tend to refer to it, "eBird evangelism" ;-) One way to make that happen is simply stated: get more people (especially all you seasoned experts with decades of checklists sitting in notebooks and/or personal electronic databases) using eBird, and using it well. A good first step in that direction is to hold more workshops on how to use eBird, how to contribute meaningful data to eBird, and perhaps most importantly how to use eBird to better enjoy the time we spend in the field, and to learn and grow as a birder. Regardless of what happens with the portal, I certainly hope Gary (and any other eBird fans still reading this) save some enthusiasm for that effort as well ;-) Getting back to eBird Portals -- they do have their place, and I'd be remiss not to mention it! A regional eBird portal can be an excellent way to tailor eBird to suit communities from different cultures, who speak different languages, who might otherwise never extensively use the U.S.-centric main eBird interface. The many portals for central and south america provide excellent evidence of this: Caribbean - eBird Caribbean <http://ebird.org/content/caribbean/> - eBird Puerto Rico <http://ebird.org/content/pr/> Mexico - eBird Mexico <http://ebird.org/content/averaves/> (aVerAves) Central America - eBird Central America <http://ebird.org/content/camerica/> South America - eBird Argentina <http://ebird.org/content/argentina/> - eBird Chile <http://ebird.org/content/chile/> - eBird Peru <http://ebird.org/content/peru/> Regional portals can also facilitate incorporating ebird-like regional efforts into the global framework of eBird, for example as happened recently in Australia: Australia - Eremaea eBird <http://ebird.org/content/australia/> Perhaps, down the road, we'll come to find that CO does need a regional interface, but for now, I'm just not seeing the need. But I do see lots of gaps in the data, and lots of potential for the Colorado birding community to fill them in. Thanks for reading if you made it this far -- this email worked out to be a bit longer than I'd anticipated ;-) Good birding, -Paul Hurtado -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/CABpQ-FWZVHaNuhL5nfVwpwchXctgnpQtGJeHYdJFFHv4ZbZhPg%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
