Hi Dennis:

I inconsistently use ebird hotspots because they have a few limitations.??Often, I?prefer to collect data at a more granular level than the hotspot allows.? For example at Discovery Park, I might keep separate counts for the meadow, the beach, and the freshwater ponds.? But?ebird only has one hotspot for the entire park.? Another limitation is that?all the?reports and lists?use the?"shared name" of the hotspot -- since eBird doesnt offer very robust reporting in terms of summary by county, etc, I "code" my locations to make lookups easier (eg: "WA Kitsap Point No Point").? Finally, eBird relies on local volunteers to review potential hotspots, so until a suggestion is approved, it continues to show as a Private Location.


Jon Leland
Seattle, WA

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Message: 10
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 18:32:33 -0800
From: Dennis Paulson <dennispaulson at comcast.net>
Subject: [Tweeters] BirdsEye
To: TWEETERS <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <59B91ED9-A961-4A61-8CAA-0EBF953C6202 at comcast.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Anyway, I hadn't planned on writing a review until I had worked with it more, but one thing that surprised me prompts a question to tweeterdom.

Many of the localities around Seattle are listed as "Personal Location." You can find it more or less on the Google Map, but without a name, you don't know exactly what you are looking for. These locations say that they may be private homes, and people are assured privacy by not giving any more information. But I looked at a lot of these, and some of them were certainly not private homes (for example, there were three such locations just at Point No Point, and as far as I know, Vic Nelson is the only birder living there). Are people entering "personal location" because it's their own special birding spot that they'd rather not share? If so, why send the records to eBird? Or is there something I'm missing here? In other words, why so many "personal locations?" I assume the majority were sent in by people on this list.

I'd be curious if anyone has any insight into this. I could try to answer questions about the application, but I'm still learning. One of the upgrades they're working on is a feature that will allow submission of records to eBird through BirdsEye.
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Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net