what is ebird & why should photographers know about it ?
- adityatiga
- Nov 24, 2023
- 3 min read
Well if you are starting with bird photography you got to know about ebird. The purpose of ebird as quoted from ebird.org (https://ebird.org/about) :
Find more birds
Keep track of your bird lists, photos, and sounds
Explore latest sightings from around the world
Join the world’s largest birding community
Contribute to science and conservation
ebird for birders is like a massive database of birds with a facility to add & view records (Photos , audio or videos) of bird sightings. The records in ebird are created by users like us . Anyone can create an account on ebird and start posting thier record. The individual records are then converted to massive statistics and pool of images , audio & video records which can be accessed in public domain. The webiste primarily aims research puposes but it does help photographers and photography also helps ebird , but how ?
The filters availabe at ebird.org helps you find what species are available near you so you can track and plan for your tours. How to do that , let us find out. If you visit the website , you will find explore option in the homepage of ebird.org .
The link will navigate you to another page where you will be presented with two options explore species or explore regions.
If you go with the species option , you will have to type in the local name of any species you would like to search for. For example let us type in Indian paradise flycatcher , you will see various names which match the string start to pop up . As you finish typing one option remains and when you click on it , you will be navigated to the resptive observation page of the bird.
On that page you will find a photgraph and subcategories of photographs like female , male or juvenile etc. There is also some descriptive text below the photograph. If you scroll down further you will see a basic statistics of sightings and records of the bird along with the range map overlayed on a wolrd map which graphically represents the areas where the birds have been recorded. Immediately below this section a scrollable section presents you with photographs which have been uploded by various ebird users as a part of their recorded birding sessions on ebird.
You can explore the links , records and statistics presented here for fun or knowledge or may be for plannign bird photography tours.
Alternatively , if you choose the explore regions option , you have to again type in a name of the region you are interested in. For example I am from Ranchi district of Jharkhand State in India and if i have to explore my area I can type in Ranchi and just like above example the names will start to pop up as we type in and as soon as we finish we will be presented with one or more than matched names. As we click on the region name , it will navigate to another page where we can see the records of various birds in sorted order of their recorded dates.
Since it is ebird there will be statistics & photo records everywhere. Again you can play with the links presented here and explore as per your will. Important thing to note here is that since date and locations are mentioned with the species name , you can take benefit of this data to plan you trip to any particular region anywhere in the world since ebird.org have data from every corner of the globe.
So above two expmples have illustrated how you can take help of the webiste's databse either to track any particular species that interests you or atleast to know whether it is available near you or not , or to have a pre visit knowlege of the species present around any particular region that you are planning to explore.
visit ebird.org and you can also create a free account to start posting records of your own. It is quite easy but do not post any false or unconfirmed data. Since this is a photography blog we are not diving into the posting part here but yes you can try it out & you can also check out my records at ebird - https://ebird.org/profile/Mjk5NTc1MA .
Happy Birding !!
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