eBird Tools: Terrific Technologies–Program Meeting Tuesday February 22

This program is now on YouTube for viewing:

Vjera Thompson grew up in Springfield, in a homeschooling family that encouraged her interest in birding. Early on, her mom connected her to Audubon walks, counts, and supportive birders; Vjera recently participated in her 26th Eugene Christmas Bird Count. She graduated from Eugene Bible College (now New Hope), and spent a winter working on St. John, Virgin Islands, before settling down in Eugene. She works for 9Wood, a local custom wood ceiling company, but finds time every day to contribute at least one checklist to eBird. She enjoys local “patch” birding by bicycle; last summer she found a Short-billed Dowitcher at her local pond for bird #150 for her one-mile patch.

Vjera has been using digital bird databases since they first existed. She was an early adopter of Birdnotes.net, which started in Oregon in 1999. In addition to being an expert user, she is also a volunteer reviewer for eBird. eBird is a worldwide database that thousands of birders and scientists contribute to.  It has powerful listing and search tools, but more importantly it collects sightings by citizen scientists (that’s us!) that researchers have used in fascinating new ways.  If you’re new to eBird or want to improve your contributions, Vjera recommends the eBird Essentials self-paced training academy.allaboutbirds.org/product/ebird-essentials/.

For her presentation, she’ll introduce us to additional eBird tools not covered in last year’s presentation.  Want to report your bird sightings on the go? Walk a non-birder through an identification? Record a song and see live bird song identification recommendations? There’s an app for that! The featured apps are eBird and Merlin. There will also be time to highlight new features on the eBird website and answer your questions.