[Tweeters] Reporting - was "new yard bird"

[Louise via Tweeters]

Many thanks for all these details, Jim.

My criteria for keeping my own personal yard list are definitely my own. I
want to know which birds are using the habitat I provide, not every bird
that might pass through the general area.

When I'm listing for ebird or whatever, I do make note of every bird I
see/hear, however distant. It's interesting, though, that Cornell encourage
us to count every bird, even when it's highly likely to be a repeat. My
tendency in those circumstances has been to count the minimum number of
birds rather than the maximum, because I have indeed been worried about
over-counting. Certainly on the CBCs I've been on, I've been encouraged to
count that way to avoid over-counting.

Does anyone know of there are specific criteria for CBCs that differ from
those of Cornell?

Louise Rutter
Kirkland

On Sun, Jan 26, 2025 at 12:24 PM via Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
wrote:


> Louise,

>

>   Back when I was first starting to use eBird I asked this specific

> question

> about my checklists.  Specifically - "when do you report (count) a bird?"

> and gave the example of my backyard feeder and the fact that I could

> see birds coming and going ... but suspected - highly - that some/many

> of them were 'repeats' and had been there as short a time ago as only a

> few minutes.

>

>   The answer I got was "if you don't know for certain it is the same bird -

> count it".  So even if you have a group of say 10 finches that are coming

> and going from your yard/feeder - the advice is to count them "every time

> you see them that you, personally, can't say it is the same bird".

>   This advice is not just about birds in our backyards.  And Cornell

> doesn't consider it "over counting" (probably because you will also

> miss many birds that might visit your backyard when you do something

> as seemingly insignificant as just getting another cup of coffee).

>   There are similar considerations for 2 or more people all seeing and

> reporting the -same- bird ... perhaps even birding together.

>

>   So here is my take/interpretation of this advice.  As long as everyone is

> using pretty much the same methods - it doesn't matter ... because

> what the science is about is the changes - over time and even over

> relatively long periods of time.  Such as from one season to the next or

> one year to the next or one decade to the next.

>   We all know about events such as "irruptions" and "long term trends"

> etc.

>

>   ===> If we have lots of data (reports) then it all averages out in ways

>             that wouldn't be true for just a few reports (total number of

>             checklist).

>

>   But there -are- lots of checklists being done in all kinds of situations.

> So report what you can ID and let the citizen science work out what it

> means.  Even reports such as "Gull, species" are valuable/useful -

> especially when compared to no reports at all?

>

>              - Jim in Skagit

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