Feather Dustup

December 18, 2020 10:26 AM

Over the past two decades, eBird has become the go-to online platform for scientists and hobbyists alike to upload and share bird observations. But it has also transformed the process and etiquette of birding. [previously]
posted by Ouverture (11 comments total)

It's delightful to me how much of this article about passive-aggressive birding behaviour seems to be dedicated to shading the specific unnamed NM eBird reviewer—"the one who misidentified the DICK", "a dickcissel, or 'DICK' in four-letter shorthand speak"— who was once rude to the author.
posted by wreckingball at 11:03 AM on December 18, 2020 [12 favorites]

One hopes it is a cautionary tale to not be rude on eBird, but I imagine the people who need to hear that message are least likely to heed it.
posted by Ouverture at 12:22 PM on December 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm a moderator for a local Facebook birding group with 1400 members. eBird gets a lot of attention because it's the biggest place to report sitings, and has an imprimatur because it's from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The behaviors described here are unfortunately rampant in all birding communities, however. I'd say that local/state level groups on social media promote a lot of the worst behaviors because they make it so easy to share photos of rare birds and get immediate feedback on those photos in a way that doesn't happen on eBird. The group I help moderate explicitly bans owl photos because owls in particular seem to drive bad behavior and unethical birding. We also boot people who we know are abusing the use of recorded birdsong to lure birds out into the open. And finally, I fail to be surprised that the rude eBird viewer was male and the author female.
posted by mollweide at 1:26 PM on December 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

Wait, why do owls drive people to be less ethical??
posted by emjaybee at 3:46 PM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Well they are very rude to Simon Cowell.

Seriously, why owls? Is it because they are so retiring that they encourage trespassing?
posted by Countess Elena at 4:14 PM on December 18, 2020

Owls drive several different kinds of unethical behavior. People getting too close to owls during the daytime disturbs them when they're resting and hiding from other birds that would harass them or even prey on them. Being driven from their roosting spot wastes energy, and makes them more vulnerable to harassment or predation. People will violate park rules (such as staying on trail) to get close to owls. And posting photos and making owl locations known drives other people to see the owls, causing even more opportunities for disturbance.
posted by mollweide at 4:15 PM on December 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

The underlying issue is that owls are obviously just really cool. This seems to cause obsession-level interest in them in many people. And I really get the impetus to see owls, but a lot of people who feel this need to see owls don't understand the problem that close observation of owls in the daytime causes, and a lot of other people don't care.
posted by mollweide at 4:28 PM on December 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

It's a shame that it's a better solution to ban owls, rather than the idiots who do disturb them.
posted by Dysk at 10:48 PM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

I have a birdfeeder on my downtown, apartment building balcony which this year has finally been found. It's been entirely visited by the same species of I assume extremely common finch so far. They visit maybe around six times a day. This article has me contemplating pedantically recording them every time they visit which is an amusing idea but I would think I would quickly tire of it

anyway birds are great but I'm pretty happy with the common ones
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:53 AM on December 19, 2020

Dysk, our group bans people who repeated try to post owl photos and locations. Unfortunately, other groups encourage owls posts. The county park where I live has had to fence off areas with wintering owls this year for the first time because it's gotten so bad. They're also aggressively ticketing people with significant fines. So sometimes the people engaging in bad behavior do get punished appropriately.

I'm also on the board of our local Audubon Society chapter. We've tried to get eBird to embargo publishing owl sitings until the spring after the winter owls have gone, but they've been unresponsive so far.
posted by mollweide at 7:16 AM on December 19, 2020 [3 favorites]

I would now like to brag that I once identified a cinnamon hummingbird while visibly shaking with anxiety. My partner and I were at the stateless border crossing between Honduras and Nicaragua as part of a truly epic road trip about a decade ago, and the car we were driving needed to be checked through the border with intense scrutiny. Men with guns strode about, and the temperature was 102°F in the shade. We'd read far too much about the recent violent history of the countries both to our left and to our right. Our passports were out of eyeshot - a terrifying concept to any traveler. Our water bottles were empty and there was simply nothing to do but stew and wait.

Yet, because it was Central America, the scenery was stupendous - impossibly green foliage everywhere, and a profusion of red flowers amid the dust and diesel. As we sat very very still (aside from the aforementioned quaking), we spied several hummingbirds zipping here and there in that very particular way they do (it looks something like if toddlers were given controls to UFOs armed with lances and then fed pure sugar). One hummer was a startling bronze color, and I resolved to memorize the identifying characteristics - dark bill edge, bronze wings, startling orange breast so I could check it against my bird book in the car. Presuming of course that the card wasn't being crushed by the border guards for some kind of malfeasance. The cinnamon hummingbird hung out for about five minutes, after which we'd all calmed down a bit and stopped shivering.

An hour later, we had made it into Nicaragua and were celebrating with a Toña beer so large the bottle's name translates to "whale".

I use eBird now, but not as a social network. Just to help identify birds.
posted by Enkidude at 2:50 PM on December 19, 2020 [3 favorites]