[Tweeters] Question about confirmed/unconfirmed rare bird reports on EBird

[Gary Bletsch via Tweeters]

Dear Emily,

Adding on to what others have said about eBird review, it is a process that depends on busy volunteers. There are eBird reviewers for every region of every country in the world, as best I understand. Most of the USA has, of course, pretty good coverage by eBird reviewers, compared to the coverage for, say, Liberia or North Korea. Even so, that coverage is uneven. Some places have reviewers who are "johnny on the spot" about inquiring about rare sightings. Other places have reviewers who are, shall we say, more laid back.

One thing that bothers me is that it can take a long time for an eBird reviewer to contact the birder who includes a rare or unexpected bird in an eBird checklist. I have received e-mails from reviewers in regard to sightings that I put on eBird ten years earlier, and which themselves refer to birds seen years, even decades, earlier than the time that I actually entered the sighting on eBird.

I was just checking eBird this morning, in regard to a rare Laughing Gull that I saw in Western New York back in 2007. If you do a species search or an "esplore hotspot," my sighting does not show up on eBird. It is blocked as being a rarity under review, or whatever they call it. I understand that, but what I don't understand is how it could take an eBird reviewer 18 years to getting around to sending what is after all a form message!

I am not an eBird reviewer. If I were one, I would spend a lot of time digging up all of the old records and sending off those inquiries. I could not rest easy until I had done so.

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

garybletsch at yahoo.com

Sent with [Proton Mail](https://proton.me/mail/home) secure email.

On Saturday, May 31st, 2025 at 10:27 AM, Emily Birchman via Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu> wrote:


> Hi all,

>

> I am relatively newer to using EBird, having only started using it in 2023. While I've gotten used to a lot of the features, I'm not an expert, so I was wondering if someone could shed some light on this for me.

>

> I'm wondering why some reports of rare birds that contain photos or recordings become 'confirmed' and others do not? Occasionally I can see why because the report doesn't clearly indicate the species being reported versus something else that's more common. But I reported two sightings in the last week that have remained unconfirmed despite adding recordings or photos and I'm curious why they're still unconfirmed.

>

> This past weekend, on 5/25, I hiked at Big 4 Ice Caves with my family and did some birding. I was using Merlin, and it very clearly caught an American Redstart singing. After patiently looking for awhile, I finally ended up spotting it - too far to take a photo but it was very clearly a redstart - black and orange warbler, white underside, I could see it singing while Merlin ID'd the song. I got my lifer redstart here in the same area last June with very clear but brief views, and this time I got to watch the bird actively flit around a tree for much longer. It was delightful! (side note: I think there was briefly a female present, as well, but I didn't have my guide or a cell phone signal to look it up so I wasn't sure of the ID and didn't report her).

> I reported the singing male with a description and later added 2 recordings from Merlin, which I didn't know how to edit but the second recording only has the redstart and a Hammond's Flycatcher calling so it seemed fairly clear.

>

> The report showed up on the Snohomish County rare bird alert as unconfirmed, and it has continued to be unconfirmed even though other birders went the next day and 2 of their reports were confirmed with only a description (not a recording) of the song, as they didn't see it.

> There are other subsequent reports after the 2 confirmed ones that have recordings and those are also unconfirmed.

>

> More recently, I went to Juanita Bay Park this week with a friend and we saw a horned grebe. We got photos using my binoculars to zoom in since neither of us have a camera other than that on our cell phones. I posted my sighting with those photos which are admittedly not great, but I think are clear enough to see that it's a horned grebe, not another species, but that one has also remained unconfirmed.

>

> I'm wondering if it just takes a long time for sightings to be confirmed, or if there's something I should have done differently to describe what I saw to make it more likely to be confirmed? I don't often get to see 'rare' birds but am happy to learn more about how to report sightings more helpfully.

>

> Thanks for any advice you have! :)

> Emily Birchman

> Kenmore WA

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