It has been more than long enough for another post on this venue, and I apologize for that for myself and the rest of the two states' eBird reviewers. Personally, long work days and many other writing commitments can be blamed. Of course, if I didn't go birding, I'd have more time to write about birding.
As I alluded in a previous post, eBird is interested in pursuing more and better habitat-based filter regions, rather than the current system of using geopolitical boundaries to define them. As part and parcel of that interest, Don Jones (a member of the Wyoming review team) will be putting together a proposal for such for Wyoming as part of his undergraduate work (as the Brits would say) at university. I have spent some time in designing such a system for Colorado, and have nearly completed a first-draft version for eastern Colorado. Though Colorado's plains may seem to be easier to deal with in this regard than is the rest of the state, the reverse is actually true. The extreme topography gradients in western Colorado actually preclude making small, tight filter regions (one would need 100s of the things!), so fairly large filter regions will still be the easiest way to treat that part of the state. In eastern Colorado, however, there are numerous large reservoirs that attract a very different avifauna compared to most of the rest of the area. In addition, the large urban area with their de rigeur tree canopy also make for very different bird habitat than found on the rest of the plains. My current map has 26 regions defined from east of the Front Range-Wet Mountains-Sangre de Cristos Mountains line, where there are currently 20 regions, eight of which extend well up into the mountains. eBird is not yet ready to greatly expand the number of "arbitrary polygons" used as filter-region boundaries, but when they are ready, Colorado and Wyoming will be ready, too.
Since February 2015, I have split Cheyenne and Kiowa counties out of the former Southeast Region into their own regions, bringing us to 39 current Colorado eBird filter regions, and with the Southeast Region no longer named such, as the remaining multi-county region is now titled Bent and Prowers. I had plans to split those last two counties, but have decided to spend the necessary time on designing arbitrary polygons, instead, which will (hopefully soon) negate any effort to make individual filters specific to Bent and Prowers counties.
Finally, I continue to fine tune existing filters, which may cause some to many data that may have resided comfortably in eBird for years to suddenly get flagged. Please do not be alarmed when you receive a request from one of us regarding a sighting from last year or from five years ago. This is a normal process, one that is greatly aided by the great increase in amount of eBird data available to analyze how filters might be made more precise. That is, thanks to you, eBird becomes stronger and stronger in its ability to define geographic and temporal bird occurrence in Colorado and Wyoming and the rest of the world.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Colorado filter news
While this post will have little or no bearing on Wyoming birders, I write to inform the Colorado birding community that oversight of Kiowa County eBird entries is now managed by a county-specific filter rather than the broad (but getting less broad by the month) southeast Colorado filter. This means that various species that are of regular occurrence in general in the southeast, but rare in Kiowa County will have more-meaningful filter limits.
Kiowa County eBird data include reports of 288 species, but many birders might be surprised by the number and variety of species for which there are no acceptable eBird reports from the county. This list includes:
Kiowa County eBird data include reports of 288 species, but many birders might be surprised by the number and variety of species for which there are no acceptable eBird reports from the county. This list includes:
and
Other species are so rare in the Kiowa eBird data set as to make for the seemingly preposterous phenomenon that there are more records for Reddish Egret than (among many others) such species as Red-breasted Merganser, Northern Bobwhite, Virginia Rail, Wilson's Snipe, White-winged Dove, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Black-capped Chickadee, White-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper, Eastern Bluebird, Sage Thrasher, Indigo Bunting, and Baltimore Oriole.
The next items on my to-do list are filters for Cheyenne (it is not particularly similar to anything else in the former southeast filter -- Baca, Bent, Crowley, Kiowa, Otero, and Prowers; note the water aspect of those counties), Archuleta and La Plata, and Lake.
Friday, April 10, 2015
Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology World Big Day!
The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology has announced a worldwide Big Day to be conducted on 9 May 2015, with the goal of getting as many as possible of the world's bird species recorded in eBird. Our two-state region can offer a couple of species unavailable almost anywhere else, Gunnison Sage-Grouse and Brown-capped Rosy-Finch. It also provides access to a number of bird species that can be difficult to find on demand, but which can be difficult elsewhere, including Trumpeter Swan, Harlequin Duck, Barrow's Goldeneye, White-tailed Ptarmigan, Dusky Grouse, Lesser Prairie-Chicken, Black Rail, Mountain Plover, Flammulated Owl, Northern Pygmy-Owl, Boreal Owl, Broad-tailed Hummingbird, Williamson's Sapsucker, Sage Thrasher, and Green-tailed Towhee. Alas, Black Swifts will not be in by then.
I encourage the region's birders to assist the Lab in this endeavor by getting out and birding on 9 May and entering the resultant data into eBird. However, I have a couple of cautions for those doing so. Entering data at a local level, such as at an individual park (though not one the size of Yellowstone N. P.!) is much more useful than is a checklist covering the birding of half a day at a large number of locations. County-level lists are particularly inappropriate, especially in counties with large elevational ranges, which often result in high-elevation species being mapped at low-elevation sites and vice-versa. I particularly encourage those with the interest and/or easy access to any of the above-listed species to make an effort to find these species as, who knows, your detection might well be the only one in the world that day! Other owl species are also of particular interest, particularly the more-difficult species: Long-eared, Short-eared, and Northern Saw-whet Owls. (A caution about heard-only Boreal Owls -- winnowing Wilson's Snipe are often mistaken for Boreal Owl.)
Other states are taking part in this endeavor, with some considering informal competitions between/among counties. Perhaps the host of Boulder County birders could challenge the Larimer County birders or Wyoming birders in/near Natrona County could challenge those in/near Fremont County. Another type of challenge might be to bird some poorly-known county or portion of a county, as data from such areas is even more valuable due to the relative paucity of existing data from them. As a Colorado example, there are very few data in eBird from Hinsdale, Mineral, or Pitkin counties from the second week of May, while there are NO data in that week from either Lake or San Juan counties! (As something of an aside, check out how many weeks have NO data in eBird from these counties: Costilla, Dolores, Hinsdale, Mineral, Rio Blanco, and San Miguel counties.)
Challenge or no, I encourage all of the region's birders to get out on 9 May and enter the resultant data into eBird!
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| Brown-capped Rosy-Finch - Snowy Range, Albany Co., WY © Shawn Billerman |
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| White-tailed Ptarmigan - Rocky Mountain National Park, Larimer Co., CO © Shawn Billerman |
I encourage the region's birders to assist the Lab in this endeavor by getting out and birding on 9 May and entering the resultant data into eBird. However, I have a couple of cautions for those doing so. Entering data at a local level, such as at an individual park (though not one the size of Yellowstone N. P.!) is much more useful than is a checklist covering the birding of half a day at a large number of locations. County-level lists are particularly inappropriate, especially in counties with large elevational ranges, which often result in high-elevation species being mapped at low-elevation sites and vice-versa. I particularly encourage those with the interest and/or easy access to any of the above-listed species to make an effort to find these species as, who knows, your detection might well be the only one in the world that day! Other owl species are also of particular interest, particularly the more-difficult species: Long-eared, Short-eared, and Northern Saw-whet Owls. (A caution about heard-only Boreal Owls -- winnowing Wilson's Snipe are often mistaken for Boreal Owl.)
Other states are taking part in this endeavor, with some considering informal competitions between/among counties. Perhaps the host of Boulder County birders could challenge the Larimer County birders or Wyoming birders in/near Natrona County could challenge those in/near Fremont County. Another type of challenge might be to bird some poorly-known county or portion of a county, as data from such areas is even more valuable due to the relative paucity of existing data from them. As a Colorado example, there are very few data in eBird from Hinsdale, Mineral, or Pitkin counties from the second week of May, while there are NO data in that week from either Lake or San Juan counties! (As something of an aside, check out how many weeks have NO data in eBird from these counties: Costilla, Dolores, Hinsdale, Mineral, Rio Blanco, and San Miguel counties.)
Challenge or no, I encourage all of the region's birders to get out on 9 May and enter the resultant data into eBird!
Saturday, March 14, 2015
The arrival of Swainson's Hawks
As the time approaches in which the first Swainson's Hawk of spring is eagerly anticipated, I feel that a caution is warranted. While the identification of Swainson's Hawk is generally considered to be fairly straightforward, there are a few situations in which identifying a bird as a Swainson's Hawk is less than straightforward. In all of these situations, the difficulty lies in not understanding the whole range of plumage possibilities in other species. I have treated one of these: light juvenile Swainson's Hawk vs. light adult male Rough-legged Hawk. Another is the Bald Eagle plumage termed "White Belly I" by Clark and Wheeler, in which individuals have white wing linings and belly contrasting with dark flight feathers. The third situation, and the impetus for this short essay, involves certain adult Red-tailed Hawks.
Steve Mlodinow sent me a photograph this morning (Fig. 1) that seems to show a buteo with a reddish bib, nearly unmarked underparts, and very little in the way of white markings on the scapulars. Looking at the picture, I can certainly see how someone could go astray in the ID process!
Figure 1. Adult Red-tailed Hawk, Union Reservoir, Weld Co., CO, 9 March 2015. Photo by Steven G. Mlodinow.
However, with a bit closer scrutiny, we can see that it is just the sides of the breast that are reddish; the center is white. Many adult Eastern (subspecies borealis) Red-tailed Hawks, at least those breeding at the latitude of Colorado (very few at the latitude of Michigan; pers. obs.), have little in the way of a belly band, thus enhancing the similarity with Swainson's Hawk.
Steve Mlodinow sent me a photograph this morning (Fig. 1) that seems to show a buteo with a reddish bib, nearly unmarked underparts, and very little in the way of white markings on the scapulars. Looking at the picture, I can certainly see how someone could go astray in the ID process!
However, with a bit closer scrutiny, we can see that it is just the sides of the breast that are reddish; the center is white. Many adult Eastern (subspecies borealis) Red-tailed Hawks, at least those breeding at the latitude of Colorado (very few at the latitude of Michigan; pers. obs.), have little in the way of a belly band, thus enhancing the similarity with Swainson's Hawk.
Bird-ID links
I write a very short note to announce the publishing of a page on this blog that provides links to various online bird-ID literature relevant to Colorado & Wyoming. If you have suggestions of online papers to which you believe we should provide links, please enter such in the comments.
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