This document provides a beginner's guide to using eBird, a global citizen science program for recording bird observations. It explains how to create an eBird account, submit bird lists by location, and explore additional features like hotspot data, range maps, and the BirdLog Asia mobile app. The guide emphasizes best practices like submitting complete lists by location to provide accurate data on bird distribution and abundance.

1. Using eBird
A beginner’s guide to listing
eBird India
For Great Backyard Bird Count-India, Big Bird Day,
Kerala Common Bird Monitoring Programme, Bangalore Bird Count,
and more!

2. Contents
View in full screen mode (click ‘Present’) for a clickable list
You can return to this Contents page by clicking on from any slide
1. What is eBird and why use it »
2. Creating an account and setting preferences »
3. Submitting a list »
4. Telling others about your list »
5. Managing your locations and lists »
6. Documenting a full day’s birding »
7. Beyond the basics: embedding photos and sharing lists »
8. Best practice in listing: complete lists; short lists, count individuals »
9. Exploring further: hotspots, range maps and more… »
10. eBird on your smartphone: BirdLog Asia »
11. Initiatives using eBird »
12. Further information »

3. What is eBird?
A global, internet-based checklist program
● for gathering observations of birds
● for birders to maintain their personal records.
In this way, eBird
● gathers baseline data on bird distribution and abundance
● disseminates information for public and scientific use

4. It is safe and reliable
● used by more than 100,000 birders
● holds nearly 200 million bird records
It has many useful features for birders
● easy to use
● send your lists to others with a unique URL
● embed photos, videos, sound files
● summarize & download your own bird sightings
● maintain your life list, state-wise lists, location-wise lists, etc.
All bird records are made available
● on-site mapping and graphing tools
● raw data available for download and use
Why use eBird?

5. Go to www.ebird.org to sign up for a free account
Creating an account

6. Creating an account

7. Set your preferences so that you see names you are used to!
Choose “Species Name Display” as: English (India)
Setting account preferences

8. Here is a step-by-step guide to submitting a bird list
Click on ‘Submit Observations’ after logging in
Submitting a list

9. The first time you submit a list, choose ‘Find it on a Map’
Submitting a list

10. Select Country as India, and leave the rest blank
Submitting a list

11. Begin typing in the search box to find a location near you
Submitting a list

12. An existing red marker indicates a public birding location (or ‘hotspot’)
If this is your location, click on the red marker to choose it
Submitting a list

13. If there is no existing marker, click on your location and add a name
Suggest it as a ‘hotspot’ unless it is a private location (eg, your home)
Submitting a list

14. On the next screen, select the date of your list, and the type of list
Most lists fall under one of the three types listed
Submitting a list

15. Once an Observation Type is selected, add more information about your birding
effort; and add comments for your later reference
Submitting a list

16. Now to your bird list! Search for the first species using the box at top right.
When you select the species...
Submitting a list

17. … the page automatically scrolls down to the text box for that species, where you
can enter your count...
… and add further details and comments if you wish
Submitting a list
If you haven’t counted individuals, type an ‘X’ in the box, indicating that you have
seen/heard the species

18. Here is a useful tip: once you type your count in the text box, type the letter ‘j’, and
you will be taken back to the search box
Click on ‘Shortcuts’ to see more keyboard shortcuts that will make your lists easier to
upload
For example, next to Eurasian Coot, type 25j. This will specify that you saw 25 coots,
and will jump you back to the search box for the next species
Submitting a list

19. If you can’t find the species you are looking for, click on ‘Show Rarities’
You can also choose to report subspecies for those races that are very distinct
If you do report a rare species, you will be asked for supporting information.
This could include a verbal description or a photo or both.
Submitting a list

20. When done, you will be asked whether you are submitting a complete list. Say ‘Yes’
unless you are deliberately leaving out some species (eg, landbirds, common birds).
Submitting a list

21. Telling others about your list
Every eBird list comes with a unique web address (URL), which is shown to you when
you submit your list. Send this URL to your friends, and they can see your list too.
On the right-hand
panel, after you
submit your list,
you will see an
option to email
yourself a plain-text
version of your list,
which you can then
forward along to
others.

22. Managing your locations and lists
Clicking on ‘My eBird’ takes you to a dashboard where you can manage sightings and
create various summaries of your observations

23. You might sometimes go birding for a full day, perhaps as part of a ‘bird race’ or a
‘bird day’
Documenting a full day’s birding
Your goal might be to generate a bird list for the full day, and you can use eBird for
this. But please consider entering multiple, location-specific lists, instead of simply
a single day list. Why? Because during the day you will probably cover many
locations across a larger area. For many reasons, it’s best if individual sightings are
tied to specific locations. (Did you see that White-breasted Waterhen at a lake or at
those rice paddies?)
So, if possible, maintain in your notebook, a separate, full list of birds for each location
you visit (with time and other effort information); upload these as separate ‘complete’
lists. Birds you see while travelling between locations can be submitted as ‘incidental’
sightings.
When you are done, you can generate your day list. Click on ‘My eBird’, then
‘Summarize My Observations’, to create a ‘Week Report’ starting on the date you
were birding. Select all locations you visited and you will be shown a list of your
species, which can be printed and downloaded.

24. Beyond the basics: embedding photos
If you have photos of the species you saw, sometimes it makes sense to associated a
photo with the sighting. Maybe it’s a particularly nice photo or maybe the photo helps
confirm the identification of a rare or unusual bird.
In brief, upload your photo to a photo-sharing site like Flickr or Picasa. These provide
an embed code,which you can copy and paste into the comments field on eBird.
Habitat photos should be embedded into the comment field for the overall checklist;
bird photos should be embedded into the comment field for that species.
You can also embed videos and sound files. For more on how to embed multimedia
files, click here. The embedded multimedia files are displayed together with your
sightings when you or someone else visits the URL for your list. Here is an example.

25. Beyond the basics: sharing your lists
If you have gone birding in a group, then it’s likely that many of you saw the same
individuals of the same species. In such cases, it’s best if one person uploads his/her
list, and then ‘shares’ the list with the others.
In eBird, sharing a list with someone means that a copy of the list is saved in that
person’s account. When this is done, all the species are then added to that person’s
life list and other bird data. For this reason, you should ‘share’ a list only with those
who were birding with you on that occasion. Once the list is shared, your friends
can delete species they didn’t see, or add species they saw which you didn’t. In this
way, everyone’s records are accurate.
To share with a friend, you will need to know his or her eBird username or the email
address which was used to register. If the person does not yet have an eBird account,
sharing via email will prompt him/her to register on eBird to be able to accept the list.
More details about checklist sharing are here

26. Best practice in listing: complete lists
When on a birding trip, many of us are tempted to record only species of particular
interest, and we sometimes ignore common (sometimes unfairly called ‘trash’)
species!
But, for many reasons, it is often equally important to document what we did not see
in addition to what we did see! If you record all the species you were able to identify,
then it is clear what you did not see. But if you don’t document all the species, a
species could be missing from your list, not because you didn’t see it, but simply
because you were not interested in it.
The best thing to do is to list all the species you saw, regardless of whether they are
common or rare, or of any specific interest to you. Then you have collected a
Complete List!
Read more here about why it’s much better to collect
Complete Lists than Incomplete ones.

27. Best practice in listing: short lists, one location
As birders, we often maintain notes such that we have a single list for an entire day.
But during an entire day, we are likely to cover several locations, and different
habitats too. The day-list then does not allow us to say precisely where we saw each
species. Knowing precisely where birds are found (and where they are not) is
important for documentation and conservation.
So, it’s best to maintain a separate list for each distinct location you visit, even if
you only spend 15 minutes birding at any given location. These location-lists can be
uploaded separately to eBird.
If you spend a long time (eg, an entire day) at a single location, you might think it
makes sense to keep a single list. But in fact, even here it’s better to keep multiple
short (eg, 15 or 30 min) lists. Why? Because at the end of the day, you will know
which species were seen in all of your eight, 30-min lists; and which were seen in only
one of these lists. And that tells you a lot more about the abundance of different
species than does a single list.
To summarize, if possible, maintain your records such that each distinct location
gets one or more 15-min, complete lists. But if this is not possible, don’t worry, and
maintain whatever list(s) you can!

28. Best practice in listing: count individuals
It’s sometimes very difficult to count of the number of individual birds of each species
we see. Despite this, even rough counts are of great value. For example, it’s possible
that on a visit to Pulicat Lake you see 3 Lesser Flamingoes, and on another visit you
see 1,500. If all you put in the box next to the species is ‘X’, then the difference in the
two visits is lost!
So it’s best to count individuals, even if that takes extra time and effort; and it’s ideal if
you can do this for all species you see.
More information on the value of counts, and on tips for how to count birds is given
here.
And more generally, here are some tips for how to make your bird lists more valuable,
both for yourself, and for the overall storehouse of ornithological knowledge!

29. Exploring further: hotspots
‘Hotspots’, in eBird, are any birding locations that are publicly accessible. Multiple
birders can add their lists to such locations (which they can’t to private, non-hotspot
locations). In this way, all lists from a hotspot can be aggregated and displayed.
You can look at aggregated bird information from hotspots by going to the Hotspot
Explorer and searching for your favourite birding location.

30. Exploring further: hotspots
Once you find your hotspot, you get
a summary of what is known from
there; and you can explore various
details about the bird sightings.
You can suggest any location as a
hotspot by ticking the box ‘Suggest
as a Birding HotSpot’ when first
choosing a location from where to
submit a list. Or you can do this for
your existing locations through the
Manage My Locations page.

31. Exploring further: range maps
eBird provides a way for you to make maps of the frequency of occurrence of any
species you are interested in. Go to Explore Data, then Range and Point Maps, find
the species you want, and zoom in to the region you are interested in.
In this map for House Crow, darker squares
are those where House Crows occur frequently
on lists. You can set the months and years you
want to examine, and compare summer and
winter maps for migrants, or reports of vultures
5 years ago versus today.
If you keep zooming in, you will see the actual
locations of lists with the species, and can
explore who has seen the species, when, and
so on.

32. Exploring further: more..
There are many more ways in which you can put eBird to use,
including:
● Looking at how species occurrence changes with the season,
using Bar Charts
● Comparing your lists and species counts with other birders in
the Top 100
● Creating reports and email alerts for rarities as they are
reported
● Summarizing your observations by week, month or year
● A very addictive global submission map, in which locations light
up whenever someone submits a new list.
● ... and much more!

33. eBird on your smartphone: BirdLog Asia
Upload your lists directly from the field using your iPhone or android phone by
using BirdLog. BirdLog Asia is currently free for download until mid-Feb 2014.
Startup screen. You
need to have an eBird
account, or BirdLog will
prompt you to set one
up.
Home screen. When
ready, touch “Submit
Sightings”
To begin, touch
“Choose location from
a map”. You will need
an internet connection.

34. eBird on your smartphone: BirdLog Asia
Find your area on the
map. If there is an
existing hotspot (public
location, shown as red
marker), choose that.
To specify a new
location, touch the map
and type in a name for
the location.
Internet connection not
needed any more.
Specify date and start
time for your list if
different from your
phone’s date and time.
The add sightings
screen appears, with a
list of species from the
region.

35. eBird on your smartphone: BirdLog Asia
Begin typing the count (here,
2 birds) and a few letters of
the species name; choose
from alternatives displayed.
Your species count (green
box) is now one.
Two Rose-ringed Parakeets
were followed by six Grey
Francolins. What you have
seen is shown in bold below,
and the species count has
increased from 1 to 2.

36. eBird on your smartphone: BirdLog Asia
In this example, we
have complete list of
four species at the end
of a Travelling count of
0.1 Km, lasting 9 min,
with a single observer.
Keep adding species
as you see them; or
increase the counts of
existing species. Touch
the green button to see
only the species
recorded.
You can save your
checklist and come
back to it later. Or, if
you have an internet
connection, you can
submit the list right
away.
From the home screen,
touch “My Sightings” to
see a list of the
checklists you have
submitted through
BirdLog.

37. eBird on your smartphone: BirdLog Asia
Do remember that
BirdLog is only an
accessory to help you
keep track of your
sightings on the go. It
is important to come
back to your main
account on the eBird
website to check
whether the lists
uploaded through
BirdLog are accurate,
and to add any
comments or
descriptions that you
didn’t want to type on
your phone.

38. Initiatives using eBird
Many birding events, initiatives and projects use eBird as a data
collection system. These include:
● The Great Backyard Bird Count, a global bird count with
substantial Indian participation (14-17 Feb 2014).
● Common Bird Monitoring Programme in Kerala (14-17 Feb
2014).
● Big Bird Day, an Indian all-day birding event (16 Feb 2014).
● Bangalore Bird Count (16 Feb 2014)
● MigrantWatch, a project to study the timing of migration to and
from India (year-round).

39. More slides coming soon..
● “spuhs” and “slashes”: what they are and when to use them
● A brief guide to bulk upload of lists from excel, etc.

40. Further information
Global
● eBird main website (www.
ebird.org), and online help
(help.ebird.org)
● eBird on Facebook and
Twitter
India
● BirdCount India (eBird in
India): Google group,
Facebook, Twitter
● Further questions? Email
birdcountindia@gmail.com