eBird Profile Pages

For the past few weeks I have been adding bird photos to my older eBird checklists.

In July I wrote about the new eBird Media Search tool. That allows one to search for photos and audio records that have been added to eBird checklists. It has only been since November 2015 that you could add photos to your checklists. Now, however, a new feature, called Profile Pages has been added to eBird. If a person so chooses, he can add a blurb about himself and make it publicly viewable. It shows a map with the number of species recorded in each country, state, county, along with the bird photos from each.

I knew I have over 325 photos of birds from Oregon, and must be over 200 in San Diego County now. But the eBird Profile pages says I had far fewer photos in my checklists. So I went back to 2002 and added photos to my checklists. I just completed adding all my bird photos to all checklists today. 536 species recorded in the United States, 411 of those photographed. 417 species recorded in Oregon, 336 of those photographed. 334 species recorded in San Diego County, California, 280 of those photographed. Here is my profile page.

My eBird Profile page. From here one can zoom in or out to different world, country, state, or county levels.

Besides the different geopolitical levels you can zoom to, you may also view all their photos that have been added to eBird checklists. IF (a big if, but highly recommended) the photographer has ranked the quality of their photos then you can sort on their best photos, along with newest and oldest. And those choices are also sortable with the zoom to each geopolitical level.

This is a good tool for tracking your own photos and species seen, and also view the same for others.

So how do you find out who has a profile you can view? The best way is to Explore Data, Top 100, and choose the state and county where they bird they most. If they have a public profile page their name will be highlighted as a web link. Click and view!

Like this:

This feature is just getting started. I suspect (hope) that additional tools will be added to the Profile pages. One thing I want is my checklist to note whether I have ever photographed a species or not. That way I can go out and take photos of birds I've never obtained in whatever region I am interested in.

Play around in the Profile page and you can see that the maps change by clicking on "Species Observed" and "Species w/ Photos." Fun stuff!