[cobirds] Reporting to COBirds (vs., say, eBird)

Hello, Birders.

Brandon Percival brings up an interesting point:

> When people submit sightings to e-bird from public birding
> locations, it would be good to also post the sighting to cobirds,
> or call the Colorado RBA.  Too many rare birds are reported
> to e-bird, that don't seem to make it to cobirds or the Colorado RBA. 
 

It's not just eBird. In this balkanized eWorld of ours, bird data are all over the place. I know many of you are members of CFO's Facebook group page, with discussion of, among other things, bird sightings that aren't being posted to COBirds. There are regional and continental online databases, such as The Natural Heritage Program's, with lots of bird sightings that are reported to neither COBirds nor eBird. There are also many local databases with great bird data; I can think of two for Boulder County alone. Some of these databases are getting into eBird (cf. DFO), but others aren't there yet (cf. Yampa Valley Birding Club). There's the West Slope Birding Network, of course. There's a nifty gadget on the CFO homepage that reports all eBird rarities, flagged as "validated" and "not [yet] validated". Etc., etc. And, ultimately, there's just good-ole-fashion word of mouth: Yesterday, I heard from a birder who's just not "plugged in" about a local rarity.

In other words, COBirds is one of, honestly, a dozen sources of bird info for me.

What to do?

I basically agree with Brandon: Post the data to your outlet of choice (Facebook, WSBN, eBird, wherever), AND ALSO let us know here on COBirds. For now, anyhow, COBirds seems to me to be the default archives for rare bird info in Colorado. Maybe, some day, when we all have AKN (the Avian Knowledge Network) electo-implanted into our brains, there won't be a need for COBirds. But cyber-birders of the sort I have in mind won't be reality until at least 2016... So, for now, I agree: cross-post all of it to COBirds.

Ted Floyd
tedfloyd57@hotmail.com
Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado

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