Hello all, Apropos several recent threads about eBird Nocturnal Flight Call Count protocol, and some confusion about how and when to use it, the eBird team reviewed the protocol's current description. We agreed that there was some potential for confusion, and we attempted to resolve points of confusion in a newly posted revision. Please see this link:
http://help.ebird.org/customer/portal/articles/1010492-entering-nocturnal-flight-call-counts?b_id=1928 The important issue we are clarifying is that counts should reflect counts or estimates of total birds, NOT flight call counts. We are making the distinction between the conservative (or exact if you can do it) estimates or counts of birds entered in the checklist on the one hand and the species comments on conservative or exact counts of the calls on the other hand. These numbers, as you all probably know, can be related in complex relationships that are still unclear (although some nice work by Horton et al 2014 following up on Larkin et al. 2002/Farnsworth et al. 2004 sheds more light on when the relationships might be more interpretable). A few other points of discussion from the previous emails - at present one can embed rich media into eBird checklists like audio via several different paths. In the future we expect to make this easier and an integrated part of eBird. Whether we will see the day that automated processing can extract information from such data, well, I want to say an emphatic YES! But, this will be a major challenge (for many reasons I am happy to discuss in a separate email). More likely, in the near future, we will see automated recording units that can provide some background information about species and call counts, hopefully something you'll hear more about soon. Now, I would like to address some other points about list etiquette, private emails, and eBird reviewing. I spoke with Chris Tessaglia-Hymes, NFC-L eList Owner, concerning this and that we both agreed I would address these concerns as a representative of eBird. First, as part of this discussion, some private email conversations were posted to the list serve community without the knowledge or consent of all of those involved in the conversations. To be blunt, forwarding without consent is an unacceptable practice (for many reasons). This is not a practice in which we should engage on this list, or in any medium of communication for that matter. Second, as a member of the eBird team and a reviewer, I understand that many times the volunteer reviewers and observers have issues communicating about one thing or another, and we absolutely do want this communication between the two parties. But in situations where conflicts and misunderstandings persist, where there is confusion or where there are deeper underlying issues, the appropriate paths to resolve these are 1) to ask for guidance from the eBird team or 2) with the consent of all the parties in the conversation to ask for guidance from the community (for example, in this case NFC list). Of course, the outcome of these private discussions, in private, or more public discussions, may serve everyone's purposes; hence the mention of the appropriate paths to resolving conflicts above. Yes, NFC data represent a huge and largely untapped potential, but there are many challenges. Chris Wood, Marshall Iliff, Brian Sullivan, and I, along with the rest of the eBird team, will be thinking about how to streamline the review process for flight call data for the eBirders and the volunteer reviewers. The eBird review team consists of many volunteers that have the mammoth task of reviewing records and trying to help observers hone their eBirding skills, whether identification or data entry. Add to that the huge challenges in assessing flight call count data, because even the most versed flight call researchers still have fundamental and outstanding questions about species ID, call counts and what they mean, etc. I plan to try to offer reviewers some guidance on how to address some of these flight call specific issues, and my hope, and the hope of the eBird team, is that eventually communities will be able to help moderate and promote this discussions. Finally, to return to flight calls, I hope that some of you in the East have been out listening this week, and will be out listening in the coming days, as the movements have been and will continue to be quite wonderful. Some of the audible movements have been coupled with the unique set of conditions that allow for direct visual observation of migrants at night, which has been super cool (especially in NYC). Regards, Andrew -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC-L_SubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NFC-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NFCL.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
