Dear CO eBirders, This is a great eBirding state and it is wonderful to see so much participation and growth in eBird. Let's keep it up! A key element in the eBird system are the county and regional filters that are designed to provide an opportunity for "quality control," and the review of records that are flagged by those filters. Hopefully review is timely so the records soon become part of eBird's public output when appropriate, and eBirders can know their contributions are being processed through the system and not left to languish in the review queue.
CO has a lot of eBird activity and at some times of the year it really spikes. May is one of those times. Volunteer eBird reviewers may deal with 100s to 1000 records in a week. It is time consuming, and there is the desire to treat each record with some consideration and not to unduly validate or invalidate any report. I make a friendly request that would make the job of the eBird reviewer much easier, and help to more efficiently review reports. *When a species is flagged as a rarity for the location and date, please be proactive and include some basic info about what you observed so the reviewer may not need to send a query.* In many cases short notes are all that is needed. Or provide more detailed info when that is prudent for a more challenging ID or a more significant rarity. *Notes that only describe the circumstances, or where the bird was, or state that many people saw the bird are usually not helpful for review of the report. * If you have photos and can take the effort to upload them into the checklist (or place a link in the checklist), that is much better than just adding the comment "photos" in the checklist and can save a query to have you send the photos. And the uploaded photos become part of the public record to benefit all. *If the report is flagged for being a high count then **indicate how you arrived at the number*. Notes like "tally", "exact count", "rough estimate", "counted by 10s", "estimated proportion of all swallows present" are all examples of information that is helpful and if nothing else may help to confirm that the high count was not an entry error (e.g., 200 entered instead of 20). Flagged reports of rarities or high counts with no information provided by the observer should be exceptional. And frankly, they are more likely to be left unreviewed for a longer time or sometimes even dismissed because no info was given by the observer even though eBird prompts the observer to provide info. And make the notes count by ensuring that they include useful information. A big thank you to the many eBirders who are conscientious and make a consistent effort to helpful info that is available as part of the public record for all. David Suddjian Littleton, CO -- 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/CAGj6RorMYg8j2atirHU%2BX0TAf%2BxG%2Bh9L%2BdLQ0VJbZ-yif7Kk5w%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
