I just want to respond to Chris' note about the differences in eBird and the Iowa Birds database because I think one statement may create some confusion for Iowa birders. Chris states " As others have noted, Iowa does have a good system that is generally focused on reporting rarities and unusual sightings". I would submit that if this was indeed the case, it would take Jim Dinsmore all of three minutes to write a summary of the summer season! Please don't just report rarities!!!
I believe the biggest difference between the two is that Iowa Birds asks reporters to do some preliminary work on their records and, especially during migration, report on first, last and peak dates. The culmination of these data points give our seasonal editors a good picture of migration throughout the state. Jim is particularly interested in breeding information for the summer season (hence the dropdown for breeding status) and winter reports help paint a picture of the health of wintering populations as well as the breadth of irruptive species movements into our state. Volunteers have only so many hours to sift through the information available to them and write a report. I think if they had to try to make sense of everyone's daily checklists, they may all resign on the spot! I just took a quick look at our data and 374 species (plus a few new ones to the state list) have been reported since we started using this mechanism a few years ago, hardly a place for just reporting unusual birds. There are over 60,000 individual entries. Our methodology for tracking on avian populations in the state has served us well for over 75 years. We have levels of peer review in place for unusual sightings to assure that there is at least a modicum of scientific legitimacy to what is published about Iowa birds. This is part of one of the most important functions of the Iowa Ornithologists' Union. I hope that folks don't view this as a battle between Iowa Birds and eBird. The technology evolves faster than we schmucks who are trying to keep up with it can paddle! If you think about it, in the past 15 years or so, we have gone from people sorting information for the season on note cards to entering data in a PC-based database to entering things on-line to integrating things like seasonal reports, IBA data, and BBA data to entering daily checklists on-line. Unfortunately our business models don't always mirror each other. In some respects it has been much easier for the developers of your PC database to create a mechanism to upload your records to eBird than it has been for us to exchange information between larger databases. E-bird is big enough to demand that kind of attention. Iowa Birds is not. Heck, being the lazy sort, if I could figure out a way to export my AviSys records to Iowa Birds, I'd be all over that! I appreciate Chris' offer to work with us and perhaps get to the best of all worlds. The IOU has been a champion of citizen science long before it was cool! We do have limitations on infrastructure - sheesh, a million records a month!! - and volunteer time to make it all happen to everyone's satisfaction. There are only so many weekends in a year and it's hard to totally redesign things when we have such an active group of people and activity is constant. For those of you who use eBird to record your sightings, and those who might like to begin, all I ask is that you do so as an adjunct to reporting to Iowa Birds and be patient as we try to make things more seamless for everyone. It would be a shame if the picture of Iowa birds got fuzzier in an effort to provide a higher level view. Ann Johnson Norwalk --- Please contribute your sightings to our list; it is only as good as members make it! --- Birding channel recommendation for FRS/GMRS radio use: Primary selection; channel 5/0 , alternate selection; channel 6/0 --- This mailing list is sponsored by the Iowa Ornithologists' Union. Membership available on-line at http://www.iowabirds.org/iou/membership.asp. ----- You are currently subscribed to ia-bird as: [email protected]
