The Human Birdwatcher Project Presents: To Catch a Stringer

Most birders think about things like, "Why don't juvenile Band-tailed Pigeons have neck collars?" or "Are the Mourning Doves in my yard now the same ones I see in winter?" or, shamefully, "What would a Mourning Dove x Band-tailed Pigeon hybrid look like?" But there are a few birders out there who are on an entirely different trip, contemplating how to convincingly fake a White-winged Dove sighting instead.

To be the Global Birder Ranking System's #7 U.S. birder, you have to have been around for a while. To achieve such an astounding rank, breathe such rarefied air, one not only needs to know birding, but to have a sixth sense about it...a sensitivity to The Force of birding, if you will. You must be able to predict the future, intimately know the past, and trust your instincts. This sixth sense comes to some after years of experience; other birders seem to lack this entirely, no matter how many years they have toiled in the field. You may not be lucky enough, or cursed enough, to feel The Force flowing through you...but if you are, not only will this preternatural sensitivity help you find birds of interest and identify them correctly, it will also inform you on the claims of other birders without necessarily knowing much about the people beforehand. The Force is an excellent judge of skill, and of character.

For some birders, this isn't important. Birding isn't about other people, is it? Birding is a personal experience....but these days that seems to apply to only a minority of birders. Most birders do not exist in a vacuum. We have birding friends, birding foes, we look for birds other people find, we go to places other birders recommend, we study bird photos online that other people take, etc. Other birders matter, even if we go birding specifically to avoid people. If Flycatcher Jen (a real person, as most of you know) happens to meet Johnny Nightingale-Thrush (not a real person) while out birding, and Johnny tells her "I saw an Intermediate Egret two miles down that trail", Jen will want to know if Johnny is a trustworthy birder before she goes out of her way to look for that bird. Or Stilt (also a real person) may be able to infer that the Cassin's Sparrow reported by Karen Chlorospingus (not a real person...though it should be) in a listserv post is probably not worth looking for, since Karen is new to birding and probably highly prone to sparrow misidentifications. Or The Eggman (legit) will know that David Diving-Petrel (fictional) is just a classic stringer and that there is a 110% chance that the Long-toed Stint David just reported is actually a Least Sandpiper. Knowing what should be followed up on, and what should not, is an incredibly helpful skill for birders.

So like I said, it pays to be strong with The Force (of Birding). You will see more birds, more rare birds, and spend less time on snipe hunts and wild goose chases. Weeding out claims from stringers is key. Most stringers go out birding, find a bird (or these days, find photos of someone else's locally common bird online and claim it is actually a rarity...estringing), and predictably try to turn it in to something uncommon or rare to pad some lists, convince others they found something great, convince themselves they found something great...or god knows why they do it. According to the Global Birder Ranking System's statistics, between 97-98% of the world's known stringers fall under this category...you know them well.

But that is not the only type of stringer. There are those who do not misidentify birds out of misguided optimism, overconfidence, or poor identification skills...in fact, they don't appear to misidentify birds much at all. These are the stringers that fabricate sightings without ever seeing a bird where and when they claimed, either by just creating a sighting out of thin air, giving no evidence at all, using photos stolen from somewhere online, or using their own photos they took in another place at another time to provide the basis of a sighting. These are the miserable, wretched, bottom-dwelling, maggot-infested stringers, and never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

BB&B has covered this story before. Almost every BB&B reader is aware of Swallowgate and what happened...or what did not happen...in North Carolina. That birder has since been excused from the birding community, his record Big Year purged from the record books in a firestorm of purification. Although I was privy to many details of that story, I was not a part of it...until now. I recently became a vigilante bird policeman in my very own county, to catch a stringer so twisted and evil that it is a wonder she even exists. The Human Birdwatcher Project takes great pride in bringing you this story today, for history is written by the Winners, not those who were vaporized on an exploding Death Star.

It all started last September. I occasionally go through the photos users upload to Santa Clara County (where I live) in eBird to see what is being crushed, misidentified, etc. I was surprised to come across a Clay-colored Sparrow, a solid if unspectacular rarity here, as it did not show up on either my Santa Clara needs alert or the rarity alert. And according to the date and location of the checklist, I had been at the same spot at the same time! What gives? Why wasn't it reported anywhere? Well, users can hide their birds from needs and rarity alerts, but still continue to contribute to eBird's public output. I didn't understand why this observer, who I will call "Lori Myers", wanted to hide their birds from everyone else, but it wasn't long before I figured it out. Looking at eBird's Top 100 for Santa Clara County for 2018, Lori Myers was doing a County Big Year.

Ugh. Ok. Lori wants to chase other people's rarities (evident by looking at her eBird photo gallery), but doesn't want to share the ones she finds? That's fucked up and pretty stupid...but in one respect it makes total sense. She is listing to win. I disagree with it, it makes big year birders even more unappealing than they already are, it could result in other local birders missing out on chaseable rarities...but I get it.

After being clued in to what Lori Myers was doing, and keeping an eye on photos she was submitting in the county, it became clear she was finding a lot of rare birds on an alarmingly regular basis. I guess Lori didn't have a job? I was briefly impressed, as I had never met this person and she was seemingly finding and documenting a lot of cool birds considering she was decidedly not one of the more skilled birders in the area - she seemed to be mainly a photographer. I even chased one of her birds, which is one of the low points in my life.

Strong with The Force I am...but not that strong.

It did not take long before I stretched out with my feelings, to listen to the The Force, and The Force started telling me that something was Wrong. I was wrong about her. Deeply, treacherously wrong. Lori Myers was finding too many rarities. Santa Clara County does not host as many rarities as the coastal counties, and Lori was finding vagrants at a clip that would be impressive for anywhere in the state. I then started looking more closely at the photos she was posting - *every* rarity she claimed had an accompanying photo, which just doesn't happen. And in the photos themselves, I started noticing patterns of irregularities...really weird crops, missing metadata, perches/backgrounds/weather that I knew were not consistent with what the locations looked like, or other photos in the same checklists.

My opinion of her quickly turned to the dark side, but for good reason...she had betrayed us all. For months I watched Lori post garbage, but mostly* plausible, rarities in eBird. It was torture...knowing exactly what was happening, but having no proof or power over it. Poor Billy had to listen to me rant and rave about this rampant stringing going on every time some horseshit vagrant hit eBird, which at times happened day after day after fucking day.

The turning point came when she attempted to take credit for finding a rarity I had found myself! I had found a flock of Mountain Bluebirds, less than annual in this county, then noticed later that week that Lori Myers had subsequently eBirded seeing one the day before me in the same area. An eBird policeman dug into it and confirmed that she did not submit that checklist until many hours after I had already reported the birds!

That was the last straw for me. Soon, I joined a cabal of eBird and state bird police that had one goal in mind...to form a rebellion and resist this Sith Lord of Stringing.

In the end, after months of surveillance, we were finally able to prosecute her for her heinous, cruel and unusual birdcrimes. Lori Myers knew that her charade was over, that she had been found out...in a final act of cowardice, she tucked her tail between her legs, changed her eBird account to anonymous, and hid all of her data and photos from public output....but it was too late. The eBird tribunal found her guilty as charged, and Lori Myers was banned from eBird's public output anyway, in case she ever wanted to attempt to "contribute" to eBird again. Her Big Year has now been erased from history, and I am told she has never submitted anything to eBird again, even for her own personal lists...but of course that was never the point for her. To protect the birding law enforcement and prosecution team from revenge killings, they will remain safely anonymous, but their valiant efforts will never be forgotten by those who were there.

This blog post is not just a story of a rising Darkness, and Light to meet it. Now, you too can identify an ultra stringer like Lori. Again, I'm not talking about your everyday, run of the mill stringer who tries to turn a Warbling Vireo into a Philadelphia, I'm talking about people like Lori who are making a conscious effort to lie. Here are some of the questions that are begging to be asked if you suspect you have the misfortune of encountering such a person.

Is the suspect a good birder? If the answer is "no", they are potentially stringer material.
How frequently do they find rarities? Think about how often the suspect reports documented/substantiated rarities relative to other birders in the area.
How thorough are their descriptions? A stringer of this magnitude is not going to go to Marantzian lengths to describe a rarity - they will probably offer two or three sentences and avoid any overly technical sounding field marks, molt terminology, discussion on distribution and migration, etc.
Does anyone bird with them? Stringers of this sort work alone.
Does anyone else see their birds? Lori Myers tried to get around this problem, partially, by reporting some rarities to eBird months after she had initially allegedly seen them - no one can chase an Eastern Phoebe from 9 months ago. She also hid her data from needs and rarities alerts and did not contribute to any listserv or Facebook group. If someone is really going out and finding rarities left and right at places that get birded a lot, inevitably some of them are going to be seen by other observers.
Where are they in eBird rankings? Stringers inevitably wind up at or near the top of a given category in eBird. What is the point of stringing if you are in 35th in a Top 100 list?
Is a big year involved? Nothing brings out stringing like a big year. It is known.

And some questions just about photos:

What does the metadata say? Lori's most blatant photos of fabricated rarities had no metadata visible to eBird users. The vast majority of photos in eBird have that data available. Indeed, most of Lori's pictures of expected, totally reasonable species had the expected metadata being displayed as normal.
Are the backgrounds and perches consistent with the location and season? This one doesn't need an explanation. Lori's November Ovenbird with vibrant, bright green deciduous leaves in the background was bizarre.
Any weird weird crops? A number of photos Lori posted appeared to crop out perches that were not appropriate for the location. For example, why post a extreme closeup of a Rose-breasted Grosbeak but lop off the bird's legs entirely?
Is the lighting and photo quality consistent throughout? Many of Lori's checklists had a lot of normal looking photos of common birds in addition to the strung rarity. In a great many cases, the photo of the rarity looked very different from the rest of the photo set - different quality, lighting, weather conditions, etc.
How many photos do they upload for each rarity? Lori Myers typically uploaded 1-2 photos per rarity of a bird she lied about finding herself; in contrast with this, she would often post more than one of known rarities found by other birders in the area. If you are going to fake a sighting, its much easier to just use a single photo than four or five.

Much like Luke respected and feared Vader's power, I will give Lori Myers credit where credit is due...her rarity selection of things she decided to string was very good, very believable if you did not examine her collection of lies as a whole. Tropical Kingbird, Northern Waterthrush, Magnolia Warbler, Indigo Bunting...these are all quality birds for Santa Clara, but not the sort of thing that would lead to dozens of birders from around the region dropping everything to chase. Her ploy worked for some time, but in the end she just couldn't control her crazed impulses and her reign of terror was put to rest. It was maddening, painstaking, and the entire treacherous experience filled my heart with hate, but in the end birding justice was served. She has never been heard from again.

Stringers beware...you will be seen for what you really are. For The Force is my ally, and a powerful ally it is.



*=One rarity in particular really stood out as being incredibly unlikely and significantly contributed in obtaining a warrant for her. She got cocky - her overconfidence was her weakness.

A Victory For BB&B, A Victory for eBirders!

"The flagging privilege is strong in my family. My father had it. I have it. My sister has it. You have that power too." - Luke Skywalker

That's how that scene went in Return Of The Jedi, right? Right.

It was only a few months ago when BB&B called out eBird for their bizarre policy regarding who could flag photos of misidentified birds, and who could not. Amazingly, the post generated a great amount of interest while limiting the confusion and butthurt that often follow interesting things around the internet, especially when birders are involved.

Here I am, the #7 birder in the United States, and they don't want my help in tracking down and destroying misidentified birds in their data set? At least a couple BB&B readers/eBird reviewers actually went to the trouble of contacting eBird about my plight, but they were stonewalled with inaction and silence, which is not really what eBird is known for. I figured I had angered the mighty eBird gods somehow, and was doomed to forward tainted checklists to mistake-hungry eBird reviewers for eternity.

But I was wrong.

Like a bolt of nerd lightning out of the internet blue, I am happy to announce that I have been awarded new powers...and if you were in the same boat as me, there is a good chance that now you have that power too.

Behold:

There it is...wrong species!!! This lucky observer will now have the wonderful opportunity to edit their checklist, changing Yellow-green Vireo to Tennessee Warbler. Now you only have to contribute 100 checklists a year in order to flag misidentified birds, instead of the lofty 365. Mellow. So pretty much everyone who was in the same impotent boat as me before is now in a much more potent boat with me, and we didn't even have to become reviewers!

Sure eBird broke the news about this already (if you missed it, jump to eBird for more details), but if you think BB&B is just going to sit here and not take any credit for this breakthrough, you will find that it is you who is mistaken. About a great many things.

We are birding's leading tastemakers and daymakers, and should not be underestimated. We are the champions of the reasonable birder, beginner and bird police alike, and where there is birding injustice, we will be there to answer the call. 

Be warned, stringers, pseudoscientists and overzealous photographers. We are watching.

Dynasty!!!

You may recall the news I broke to you at the beginning of June...the news that I Am Yardbirder. What has happened at Rancho Del Bastardos since then? A little and a lot. I'm here every day, I would know.

To be truthful, it's been a mixed bag. Some chocolate, some yogurt-covered almonds, and far too many disgusting Brazil nuts. Who likes Brazil nuts anyway? Talk about an unnecessary food. It doesn't matter, because by the end of July there was not a Brazil nut in sight.

Lesser Goldfinches love the thistle feeder to the point that they don't care if you are standing next to them, crushing them without respect or restraint.

If you're reading this, you are a birder, and you are intimately familiar with the phrase "summer doldrums", which plagues almost the entire state of California under 5,000 feet in elevation. If you think birding your favorite places in summer is uninspiring, you know that your backyard is not exactly going to be "going off".

In the first half of June I added two new species to the yard total - Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers. However, after HAWO, I was solidly shut out until the middle of July, when I got a heard-only Barn Owl with an assist from Annabelle, who had kindly woken me up in the middle of the night in order to get the bird. Apreesh. That brought me to 83 species for the yard, which is a pretty nice number if you ask me. Fall migration is underway, so I expect to do better in August than I did in July. The Los Capitancillos Ponds are full to the brim though, so my chances for adding some shorebirds other than what I have already (Killdeer and Spotted Sandpiper) are dishearteningly low at best.

Hooded Oriole/Black-headed Grosbeak yard combo! Sure this may be a normal combo in some southeast Arizona yards, but it is novel for me. Hooded Orioles are fairly common in the neighborhood, but grosbeaks have only put in a handful of appearances so far. The late spring Rose-breasted I wanted to visit so badly never materialized, so I am now waiting for a fall Rose-breasted.

In May, you will remember that Rancho Del Bastardos had the highest species list of any yard in the state of California (ranked by eBird), an honor bestowed upon me that I did not accept with nonchalance. Who knew that my little bastard-filled ranchito would be so dominant? Well, I am happy to report that not only did Rancho Del Bastardos take top honors in May, we took it in June!

Incredible! Back-to-back big months!

In July, things were different though...by checking California yard lists in eBird, I could tell that other yardbirders were getting pretty fucking pissed off by Rancho Del Bastardo's dominance of California yards for two months in a row. But I birded, and birded, and birded the shit out of my yard. By the final days of the month, I was tied for first place, and the rest of the competition had been outbirded (sorry Brian, we can't all be #7....oh and please don't kick me off eBird).

While I can see Acorn Woodpeckers distantly every day, they have only come to the feeder a couple times. On this occasion, the bird enthusiastically tried to impale House Sparrows with its bill, a gesture I appreciated.

Bewick's Wrens are constantly in the yard. When will the scolding cease?

Finally, I decided to take decisive action. I could not tolerate this yardbirding stalemate any longer. I spent some time outside one evening, to see if anything different from the morning scene would fly by...and I did not have to wait for long. BANG Barn Swallow. BOOM White-throated Swift. KAPLOOEEYYYYYYY Common Raven!!! Ok, none of these are rare birds or anything, or new to the yard list, but they were all new for the month! And with these final additions, Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey joyously embraced...a triple crown for Rancho Del Bastardos!

Like the San Francisco Giants once had, I am now in the midst of a yardbirding DYNASTY here at Rancho Del Bastardos. More species have been recorded from my yard than any other California yards for three consecutive months...I am waiting for eBird to send me my championship yardbirding rings.

Some of the local mockingbirds are constantly doing this wing-flashing thing when they are foraging, it's pretty funny. This recently-fledged juvenile also embraced the technique.

It's a very deliberate and conspicuous habit, not just a quick wing flick. More mockingbirds should do this, it is very becoming.

Caspian Terns are foraging behind my house constantly. I haven't had a whole lot of luck crushing waterbirds from my backyard, but the terns do give some good opportunities. Also, it is really weird to be accustomed to hearing the guttural, violent calls of these these things from your own suburban living room.

I want to thank all of you, because we have the greatest fans in the world! This is for you! And don't worry, we won't be resting on our laurels over here...a fourth month of yardbirding glory sounds even better than three.

See you at the victory parade.

eBird and the 365 Checklists: Quantity Over Quality?

Perhaps you would enjoy the comfort and familiarity of something well-established and obvious stated to you. Let's try this on for size...eBird is good, free, and always improving. It sorts your lists, informs you of rarities, gives you access to reams of data, and contributes to many scientific studies. I mean, chances are that you got at least one life bird because of eBird, and life birds are practically priceless.

That said, eBird does not have the kind of backing that Google or Oracle does. The people responsible for bringing eBird into the world have not become mega-celebrity billionaires as a result. There is no army of coders behind the face of eBird, gentrifying communities and causing white flight, no legion of brogrammers ruining your favorite local bars. For good or ill, eBird is just not that big.

What that means for us users is that change does not come at a rapid clip, which is fine...the real bugs in eBird or the app tend to get sorted very quickly, while new features are rolled out more slowly. Totally understandable. However, there is one particularly irksome thing in eBird that grinds my gears more than anything else...

This one particular shortfall of eBird is the 365 rule. Now at this point, if you are still reading this, I'm assuming you are an eBird user...if you're not, I apologize for how bored you must be right now, but I am not going to accept the blame for that. Anyhow, let me give an example of what I am talking about....

Joey Birdwatcher photographs a Common Goldeneye. He thinks it is a Barrow's and attaches his photo of it to a checklist. Barrow's Goldeneye is not flagged as rare where Joey Birdwatcher went birding, so the regional reviewers do not see his error.

The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive, who is not an eBird reviewer, decides one day that he wants to look at pictures of Barrow's Goldeneyes submitted through eBird. He comes across Joey Birdwatcher's photo, which is obviously misidentified. Felonious sees the link to click to "report" the photo, and goes to click on it to report the misidentified bird. What he sees is this:

Now nerds, before you freak out, ML45885311 is not actually a misidentified photo, this is just an example for the sake of a screenshot, so calm down. Anyways, you will see that Felonious has only a single option here, and although he considers the misidentified goldeneye both offensive and inappropriate, he does not believe that eBird wants this photo to be flagged as such just because it features a misidentified bird. He figures they have something totally different in mind, like porn or a mound of dead squirrels. So what is Felonious to do? He is not a reviewer, but as you probably know, you don't have to be a reviewer to flag misidentified bird photos. Sadly, he "only" submitted 364 different checklists last year. Had he submitted 365 different checklists, eBird would have rewarded him with an entirely new power...

Wrong species...there it is. Had Felonious been in the 365 club, he would have seen something like this instead...indeed, he would have the power to flag photos of misidentified birds.

As a veteran birder who can identify the shit out of a great many birds, I'm not stoked about how photo-flagging privileges are awarded. It really seems to be that the quantity of checklists submitted has greater importance, in this instance, than observer quality. But let's face it, the number of eBird checklists submitted in a year has almost no correlation to the person's skill set as an observer. Many of the continent's most notorious stringers actually are out birding a lot and submit a great many eBird checklists. Baffling, but true.

The 365 rule also rewards obsessive birders who create checklists while stopped at red lights (no, I'm not making this up) or on daily binocularless walks to their office, which I guess can be fun for listing purposes but generally have very little scientific value. Are these the best birders to be doing quality control in eBird?

Another point worth bringing up is that the 365 rule penalizes users who have lives outside of birding...believe it or not, not all birders are retired, or wealthy/free enough to be able to bird most of the week, every week. If I still lived life as a Perpetual Weekend six months a year, 365 complete checklists would not seem out of reach, but alas I work full time, year-round, and now I have a baby to care for...let's face it, I'm not going to submit 365 checklists in 2017, and probably not in 2018 either. I will be birding regularly of course, and not to sound conceited (a popular character trait among birders) but I consider my ability to ID birds in photos to be above average. I will not stoop to stoplight birding just to bump up my checklist total, or make checklists for the walk from my driveway to my front door...I have my dignity, and know that these sorts of lists generally cater to the birder's dirtiest obsessive desires more than they do the scientific community.

Of course, it's easy to just complain about something without offering a better idea. An alternative solution? Give eBird reviews the ability to award users this power. Perhaps a reviewer can only give flagging privileges to a certain number of other users, so not everyone and their mother is patrolling eBird and mistakenly flagging photos as the wrong species. Of course not all reviewers have the best judgement either, but I think most would recommend the most skilled users who could flag misidentified photos.

What is the problem indeed?  I wish I could do something about this Orange-breasted Bunting, but alas I cannot. I am unworthy of such immense power...and I don't know who the appropriate reviewers are or how to reach them. But for the sake of finishing this post, I'm sure there are other good (better?) ideas out there for figuring out who should be able to flag misidentified birds...my solution is no Final Solution.

To reiterate, I am grateful for what eBird does already and the vast majority of changes they have implemented over the last few years...but this one is hard to swallow. 

The Proctologist, The House Finch, and The eBird Checklist

Birders run the gamut from utterly boring to insufferable to eccentric to assholes to flat out crazy. Some are even fun to be around. All may not be interesting, but most are weird, whether the weirdness is worn on the sleeve or buried deep down inside where it grows and festers and makes you a little sicker every day. It is known. I could talk about it, but I'm not gonna. Sorry.

What is fascinating is how a birder's use of eBird can really highlight certain personality traits that would not be so obvious.  Yes, eBird not only sciences, keeps your lists for you, and tells you where to find birds, it is a tool of expression!  Why do you think people actually get banned from eBird? It's not just because they are sketchy birders, I will tell you that much.

But I'm not going to go down the wide and worn path of inflated numbers or misidentifications or not reporting perfectly chaseable rarities until it is too late.  Anyone can whinge about that. I'm going to talk about a singular phenomenon; the pointless checklist.

eBirding can be fun. I get it. I've eBirded humorous things, whether just to log a county tick or a new patch bird or to add a bird to a day list. Guilty! Right here!  What I am talking about is how certain people go out of their way to eBird everything, because it is in their obsessive nature, and because they are somehow under the belief that they are making an important contribution to science.

Look, birding is not inherently science, I'm sorry. It's just not. Live someplace where there are lots of Rock Pigeons? Don't worry about doing an incidental checklist for every one you see. Really, don't. How about someplace where there is a thriving grackle population?  Trust me, grackle students will not hold it against you for not busting out an eBird checklist when you see one fly over the freeway. Just because you see a House Finch while driving to the proctologist and enter it in eBird does not make it sweet sweet valuable science. There are a number of eBird users out there who enter the proverbial House Finch into eBird while doing the proverbial drive to the proctologist office. Sure you have entered it into a data depository, and maybe that brings you satisfaction...but have you thought it through?  Or is this just an obsessive-compulsive tendency that eBird has decided to drag out of your brain?

This is the kind of checklist I'm talking about...the proctology House Finch. It is one thing if you go birding someplace for 20 minutes and all you see is a Mourning Dove. That sucks, I feel bad for you. You squeeze all the satisfaction you can out of putting that MODO in eBird, you earned it. Not only did you document a Mourning Dove, you also documented that there was nothing else observed at the time, which can actually be more valuable information than your dove sighting. You were looking specifically for birds, not doing anything else, and you saw what you saw. Great. Again, this is not a bad checklist...it is the Proctology House Finch that grinds the gears of many birders.

Proctology House Finch is, of course, something that should be entered as an "incidental" checklist. Most eBird users know that, whether they feel the compulsion to get every single bird they see into eBird or they only use it once a month. You are not really birding when you see Proctology House Finch, you are on your way to the proctologist, of course. If you are not entering your proctology birds as incidentals, you have brought great shame and dishonor to you and your family. Now that we have established this, I'll borrow a quote from the eBird website: "The importance of using Incidental Observations only as a last resort cannot be...overstated. Data recorded without effort are of use for more limited analyses, typically mapping and seasonal distribution information."

Do you see?  It really is that simple.  Unless you are entering an incidental observation of an uncommon or seasonally uncommon bird, or are in an area poorly represented in eBird data, there is really no point in eBirding the Proctology House Finch unless it's to beef up one of your own lists, or worse, to boost your number of total submitted checklists, which is embarrassing. Here in Alameda County, entering all my House Finches I see (which is a lot, they nest in my house) into eBird really does not contribute any sort of knowledge to anyone; they are abundant, well-established, year-round residents captured in other checklists constantly and there is no one who needs to be convinced of this...so both on a practical and statistical level, Proctology House Finch would not accomplish anything.  Maybe if we had some nuclear fallout to deal with, I might change my tune.

Proctology House Finches ultimately serve no other purpose besides scratching some itch in your own head...an itch that all other eBird users can now see. Rest easy, anxious eBird users...you don't have to eBird all birds. The birds, and eBird, are going to be ok without your constant vigilance. Maybe you could focus your energies on educating people on outdoor cats, or finding Vague Runts.

Remember, eBird is not just a scientific and birding tool...it is also a window to the soul.

The Fall of the Bird Police: Death by EBird?

The Crescent City Common Scoter, a jaw-dropping rarity and first North American record. Do I have it an eBird checklist?  Yes.  Did I send a report to the Bird Police?  No.  Are these things connected?  Read on.

Earlier this month, frequent Bird Policeman for the California Bird Records Committee (CBRC) and beloved birding legend Kimball Garrett wrote the following email to the local L.A. listserv:

L. A. Birders, 

In corresponding with CBRC Secretary Tom Benson, I learned that he has received documentation for the Thick-billed Kingbird in Horsethief Canyon Park in San Dimas this past winter ONLY from a single observer on 22 November 2014. Yet eBird records indicate that the bird was found on 15 November and seen by dozens to at least 3 January 2015. Many eBird submissions during that period were accompanied by photographs and/or descriptions. 

Similarly, the Worm-eating Warbler at The Village Green, seen by approximately 23,687 people, was documented for the CBRC by only three submitters. Yet there were about 125 eBird entries, many with good photos and other documentation. 

This is (yet) another plea for observers to submit documentation for CBRC review species to the committee for review, even if you know that many other observers also saw the bird. First, you might be surprised by how little documentation the CBRC receives even for long-staying mega-rarities. Second, your added documentation can provide crucial information about changes in appearance (e.g. through molt) and behavior of rarities, and can provided important information on phenology by helping to pin down the date spans over which they are present. Finally, and most importantly, the CBRC maintains a thorough and permanent archive of rare bird records for California, and your submissions become part of that archive. Photos on photo-sharing sites (such as Flickr) that are linked to eBird submissions may not be there in a decade, or a year, or even next week. 

Yes, the eBird folks are working on a more permanent way of archiving documentation photos, video and audio, and the ways in which records committees, North American Birds editors, and eBird users interact will clearly evolve over time. But at present the laudable emphasis in the birding community on eBird has unfortunately translated to a vast reduction in direct submissions to the CBRC. 

Well...what do you think?  Kimball is certainly not condemning eBird in any way, but is eBird really behind the drop in record submissions to California's Bird Police?  Is there a direct correlation between the rise in eBird use and the decline of reporting to the Bird Police?  Being the nation's #7 birder, as ranked by the Global Birder Ranking System, this issue is of great interest to me.  Some thoughts:

- While eBird is not a permanent place for documenting bird records, it is ostensibly pretty close. EBird is not going anywhere anytime soon.  If you put something in eBird, it is going to stay there for as long eBird is around, which will probably be for a very long time.  That said, like any website, it is vulnerable to hacking.  Can you imagine what would happen if a disgruntled birder (and there are a lot of those) acquired some hacking skills? Or, much more likely, if Flickr got hacked?  Yeesh. Observers can delete their checklists at any time. Photographers can delete their photos at any time. We must give the Bird Police some attention.  But am I ever going to be deleting/hiding my eBird records and my photos?  Nope.

San Francisco's long-staying Rustic Bunting was seen by hordes of birders, I suspect well over 1,000.  I wondered how many folks submitted documentation to the CBRC, so I checked.  The answer is ten (10).  I wonder how many birders even thought about submitting documentation to the CBRC...  

- An eBird reviewer may make the incorrect decision of negating an observation of a very rare bird; eBird reviewers, after all, often do not have the credentials of your average Bird Police Officer and they are only one birder.  Conversely, there is no doubt that misidentified rarities slip through the cracks and make their way into eBird.  When an eBird reviewer thinks they personally have found a rarity, you can be sure that they will get it into eBird, whether it was correctly identified or not.  All birders are fallible. Princess Leia's classic line comes to mind: "I am not a committee!".

- A huge proportion of the birding community do not care about submitting documentation to the Bird Police, regardless of experience, age and skill.  There are a multitude of reasons for this, and it has nothing to do with eBird.  I'm not dissing the Bird Police here, just stating fact.

- I've been birding for over 20 years now, and I am comfortable saying that there are more birders now than ever before...which means there are more new birders than ever before.  Shouldn't that automatically translate to more love for the Bird Police?  Well, no.  Newer birders generally do not concern themselves with submitting records to the Bird Police.  They often lack the skills and the confidence to submit records, and it probably does not seem like a high priority for them if they are still struggling finding and seeing comparatively common birds.  And if they associate with other birders who don't submit documentation either, then they won't be doing it any time soon; it's just not in their culture, so to speak.

This is one of two (2) Rusty Blackbirds I have ever seen, both of which fall under the jurisdiction of the CBRC.  I've yet to see one where they actually belong, though I have a chance next month!  Photographed in Santa Cruz County, CA.

- One thing that eBird is great for, in terms of rarities, is documenting exactly how long a rarity is being seen at a particular site.  The Bird Police, as far as I know, has no good mechanism for this; they just hope birders will keep on submitting records for an (usually) already well-documented bird. I suspect it is a common situation in which a records committee will receive a small number of records of an individual Vague Runt that may actually be seen over a span of weeks or months.  Do the Bird Police completely ignore the data that is readily available on eBird about the dates the bird was really being seen for?  I suspect it depends on which department (er, state) we are talking about.

- I will readily admit that I was one of those birders who eBirded the Thick-billed Kingbird mentioned above, but did not send a record to the Bird Police.  For posterity, here is my description: "Heard only by Dan Maxwell and myself.  Originally heard from a great distance in the housing tract west of the park making short, 2 or 3 note calls that I was not familiar with that sounded similar to a Cassin's Kingbird. Eventually the bird came considerably closer, and once clearly and loudly uttered a single series of distinct and varied calls that Western (extremely unlikely to be present here during this season), Tropical and Cassin's Kingbirds are incapable of making; Thick-billed Kingbird has much more variability (and sometimes, melody?) in their vocalizations than any of these species, which we clearly could discern.  Identification was confirmed by checking recorded vocalizations on site. We lingered in the area but we never heard the bird again."

That's it.  That's all I've got.  I would never in a million years send this to the Bird Police had I not known that a Thick-billed Kingbird was present on site, and I feel that follow-up reports should bear the depth worthy of accepting the record as if it were a first-time sighting...or at least have a decent photo/recording of the bird.  I am 100% sure we heard the Thick-billed Kingbird, but let's face it, my description sucks!  Would it really get accepted? Does it belong in the annals of Bird Police History? I think that when you yourself would strongly consider rejecting your own record (and I am #7!), that is a valid reason for not offering your observation to the Bird Police.

- I think there is a very strong case for claiming that birders will use eBird instead of notifying birders of notable species via listserv or RBA or North American Birds, you won't get any argument from me there.  I'm guilty of that myself, though I don't consider myself a chronic offender.

- Birders are generally unaware that when hundreds or thousands of people see a review bird, almost no one is submitting documentation to the Bird Police.  Kimball was right to bring this up; it is not a widely-known fact.  Even some Bird Police will neglect to submit documentation of committee birds that someone else found, and they know full well about this problem.

This is the famous Monterey Arctic Loon, which wintered near the Municipal Wharf and was relatively easy to see, unlike the other members of its species I've seen in the Aleutian Islands. Querying the CBRC database, I found out that the first Arctic Loon I chased (unsuccessfully) years ago ended up being rejected by the committee...good to know, and I'm glad that information is available online.  Bird Police departments everywhere should do their best to maintain an active online presence; I think it's good for all of us.

So the real question is this: how often do birders submit their sightings to eBird as a direct substitute for submitting documentation to the Bird Police?  Despite appearances, I believe this happens relatively rarely. When I enter a record of a committee bird into eBird, that does not mean that I would have sent the CBRC documentation had I not been an eBird user, and I think that the same applies for thousands of other birders.  I do not make the conscious decision to submit a photo or description of a review to bird an eBird checklist as a direct substitute for sending it to the Bird Police. Personally speaking, when I don't submit documentation of a review species, but know that I should, it's almost always because I know that other Bird Police officers have seen the bird. Part of their sworn duties as Bird Police are to submit documentation of review species they see, amirite?  As Kimball said, I suppose one should never assume that a rarity is being packaged up, sealed, and sent to the Bird Police's evidence room for safe keeping.  All birders, even the Bird Police, are fallible, and all but the most demented of us have tendencies of laziness.

EBird has brought countless rarities and birds of interest to the public sphere that likely would never have seen the light of day otherwise.  As others have pointed out, there are a lot of birders who utilize eBird who do not contribute to listservs or RBAs at all, let alone bend the knee to the Bird Police.  By now, many thousands of birders owe something to eBird, whether they are active users or not.  The Bird Police are going to have to start incorporating eBird data sooner or later; it is truly the elephant in the Bird Police Station. Exactly how this unfolds will be fun to watch.

Thank you for all your hard work officers, for keeping us safe from the stringers and the sketchy birders.  And thank you, eBird, for being god's gift to birders...you seem to be winning the popularity contest.  If you are one of those people who do pledge allegiance to the Bird Police, at least once in a while, we would like to hear your take on all of this, and obviously if you are a Sworn Officer of the Birding Law, we need to hear from you.  Despite appearances, your birders need you...now, more than ever.

Birders As Art VIII

Entering Ebird data in the field is really, really hard.