33 eBird and Merlin
About this episode
A birding app can change what you notice on a familiar walk. Lareen Newman shares how eBird and Merlin can help you identify birds, record sightings and find new places to visit.
Episode illustration: Blue-billed Duck
Resources
eBird Mobile app on Apple App Store or Google Play
Pizzey and Knight's 'Birds of Australia' app on Apple Store or Google Play
Recording of Plumed Whistling Ducks was uploaded by Nigel Jackett on xeno-canto.org
Meet the guest
Lareen Newman has been observing birds since she was 10 years old, starting with the birds in her childhood garden in England. In the mid-1980s she participated in some of England’s first Big Garden Birdwatch sessions, writing down what she saw on a paper checklist that got posted to a collection centre. Lareen has been a ‘bird noticer’ in Australia for over 30 years. She takes her binoculars and birdbook on local walks and holidays, and her birdwatching has been taken to a new level since she discovered eBird.
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Kirsty: I would like to acknowledge that this episode was recorded on the traditional country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. I would like to pay my respect to Elders past and present. I recognize and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs, and relationship with the land, sea, and sky. I would also like to extend that respect to other first peoples listening to this podcast.
Kirsty: Welcome to Weekend Birder. I'm Kirsty Costa and I'm a teacher conservationist, and I'm really becoming a bird nerd. Thanks to our awesome guests. You might have heard us talking about a citizen science platform called eBird. Well, friends, I'm really grateful that Lareen Newman is here to tell us more about it. As always, let's start off by hearing how Lareen became a birdwatcher.
Lareen: I really first got interested in birds when I was little, just watching birds in the back garden and where we used to sit and eat breakfast, we could see little birds coming on the bushes, and we used to put out nuts for the Blue Tits. Also, my dad's family lived not far away in the country. So when we would go visit my nan, he would invariably know there were more hens on a little pond and he'd show us the more hens and the nests. And so I guess that started out my interest. I do remember when I was probably in my early twenties, in my own place. I think it must have been the English Society for Birds, ran like an annual bird count or something and I posted off to get the paper checklist and sat there whenever they told you to sit there and noted what popped along in the garden. You know, any just black birds and easy things and posted that often. So I suppose I've always sort of been a bit interested in noticing birds. In my early twenties with my husband got married young, we moved to Australia. And of course instantly you are like, oh gee, there's these big black and white birds called magpies in the garden. And I think for the first Christmas we were here, my husband bought me an Australian bird book. So we could start just looking at what was in the garden. And I guess from there, just every time we went on holiday we'd come back and just, you know, see what we'd seen. Don't think we had binoculars in those days. So, yeah, just, you know, just out of interest, what was that? And getting to know the, the place. I just don't get up early. I'm not a get up early with the birds and notice them or when they're out early and observe them and go into great detail. I'm more of a, if I go somewhere, I just like to see what's there and if it's something new that's really nice. Otherwise, I just wanna sort of see the range of birds that are there. So I'm not a person that is, At the moment, totally mad. Willing to get out really early or stay up late at night. And you know, I just like to go out and just see what's there really and be interested in what's around me.
Kirsty: One day, Lareen discovered the eBird app when she discovered that she had left her bird book at home.
Lareen: Having had my bird, but which now is sort of falling to pieces really, ‘cause I've had it, what, in a 30 years or something. And I used to write in, every time I saw some, you know, I'd write, you know, “Adelaide City May ’94,” or “Melbourne” or whatever it was. We were on holiday about 18 months ago and I for some reason thought, “Oh, we're never gonna see any new birds there. Don’t even bother to take the bird book”. But we always take the binoculars in case you might see something or you know, just have a look. We did find something new, of course, I think it was like a kestrel or some falcon thing by the beach. So I'm like, “I wanna know what it is! I'll just search on my phone”. I'm like, “Oh, there's this thing called eBird that looks interesting”. So we got back to the holiday shack and we're just looking at, “Oh, this looks really interesting. It can tell you what birds are around here. And it's also got a whole list of everything else we might see. Oh, If we go there, we might see a blah blah duck”. So we just sat at the shack and got really interested in it and haven't really looked back since. Actually, it's taken my birding to a whole new level, my bird noticing to a whole new level.
Kirsty: eBird was set up by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which is a unit of Cornell University in New York State. The project's goal is to gather scientific information about birds, mainly in the forms of checklists collected by bird watchers, citizen scientists like you and me. Many people download the app onto their phone, or they write down their bird sightings and then enter their data into the eBird website. More than 100 million bird sightings are entered each year. It's massive. This data is really powerful because it is freely available for scientists, organizations, governments, and anyone else who wants to view it. And this is one of the reasons that Lareen takes the time to use eBird.
Lareen: Because of the things that eBird can tell you means that I'm sort of getting better at bird watching, but at the same time, all of the data that I log on my personal hotspots, or if I go somewhere that's a public hotspot, that's all contributing through to Cornell University. It’s the global citizen science project of what birds are alive, and I know that that apparently feeds through, like our state departments can use that for planning and an ecological understanding. Councils can use it, researchers can use it for particular species, and I know they look at migration, you know, migratory route, so they can do fantastic things. On their website, you can look at what they're doing with the data, but you know, mainly I like it ‘cause it helps me, but it's nice to know it's actually helping the whole world at the same time.
Kirsty: Let's spend a bit of time exploring how to use eBird. Basically, birdwatchers record what they see by selecting the name of the bird, typing in the number of birds, and there's also room to make any comments or notes which can be seen by other eBird users.
Lareen: When we are going somewhere, or I realize I'm somewhere that's got some birds, I just basically open up the app version on my phone and you just click start a checklist. It means that I can, you know, log the things I see. I don't always do that. Walking around with the phone. I might just put that back in my pocket and just make a mental note. You know, that number of ducks and that mangrove mag. But the good thing is it sort of gives you a likely list of what you're gonna see. So then if you see something you think, is that a this or a that? Oh, it must be a this because that's not on the list, or those things don't even turn up in this area. So I think it's really helpful in that way.
Kirsty: What Lareen is referring to is that the eBird app uses your phone's g p s to work out where you are in the world. It then generates a list of the birds that you might see. This is really useful if you're a beginner birdwatcher, or you're still figuring out what birds could be in the area. I personally find it really valuable when I visit a new place, and I may have trouble identifying what's around me. eBird helps me whittle down the list. There's a good chance that you will still need some help to identify birds because eBird is simply a list of names. This is where Merlin, another app by Cornell Lab of Ornithology really comes in handy.
Lareen: If I don't know what I'm looking at, I will open up another app in the field called ‘Merlin’. You can click on where you are and it'll give you a list with all the pictures. And then you can click on say a magpie, and it'll show you a picture of a male magpie, a female magpie, a baby magpie, and you can work out if that's what you are seeing. And you can also find out more about the actual bird. So that's helpful and children can go on. They want kids to start, you know, start up a little checklist and do your own, do your back garden, do your balcony, do your patio. You don't even have to be going anywhere to be logging birds, ‘cause I think they just wanna know what birds are turning up where. And you can keep that, all that information private to yourself. No one else except them gets that information. So I think the Merlin thing's really helpful. And then if I don't know what it is, I tend, I've sort of bought myself a little camera now, so I'll tend to take a photo before it flies away, and then when I get back home, I can check on Merlin or check in my bird book. So you'd have to lump a bird book around with you.
Kirsty: I also use the eBird and Merlin combo on my phone all the time. You can even click on the bird name in eBird and it will open up in Merlin so you can get help with ID-ing. It. It's really handy that these two apps talk to each other. eBird can even be used when you're out of range. It will upload your checklist when you've got internet connection. Again. Merlin, on the other hand, is not great if you're out of range, so I always set my location before I go out. I always have another bird guide app with me just in case, like Pizzey and Knights’ Birds of Australia or Morcombe’s Birds of Australia. I'll also put links to these apps in the show notes. The Merlin app has other cool features which you can use separately or with eBird. For example, if you select ‘Start Bird ID’, you answer a series of questions like the bird’s colour and what it was doing, and Merlin will try and ID it for you based on location. There is also the photo ID feature where you can upload the crappiest photo of a bird that you've ever taken on your phone, and Merlin will try and identify it for you. This feature is mind blowing. I tested it by taking a photo of a Crescent Honeyeater from far away on an overcast day, and Merlin could identify it. There is also a sound feature where you can upload a recording of a bird call and Merlin will try and identify it, but the library is more loaded up with American birds and birds from around the world and the technology is still figuring out Australian bird calls. But either way, it is definitely technology for the win.
Lareen: So one of the things I particularly like about eBird is that it has a ‘Hotspot’ finder, which are places where somebody has said this is a good place for birds, they've logged some birds, and then they've recommended it as a public hotspot. So then on eBird, when you open up on your phone, it has a explore search option and you can explore up to 30 kilometers away. It actually gives you zones from 2, 5, 10, and 30 kilometres and in the last day, week, fortnight, or 30 days. So then I get a whole map of like the whole area of Adelaide and it's got red spots showing up where people have been in the last whatever days, and blue spots, which are other hotspots. So if I sort of think, “Oh, we feel like going for a drive today, about 10km away”. I can just expand the map and see what's around and have a click and think, “Nothing interesting's turned up there recently. No. Let's have a look at this other one. Oh yeah, look, some interesting things have turned up at the wetland. We haven't seen them before”. We'll get some sandwiches and chip off down there. So I really like that. And then, you know, if we're going on holiday, like say to Victoria, if I go onto the website (ebird.org) that will let you search much further afield and in different ways. I sometimes use eBird on the web on my phone ‘cause it just gives you different options. That's been fantastic. We've found, you know, we've lived in Adelaide 30 years and we've found these places that are just up the road we never even knew existed. So it's giving us actually new places to visit and go for walks and explore, even if we don't wanna do any birding. And it's just, it's just great. Yeah. Love it.
Kirsty: Just like Lareen, I have discovered bushland reserves, wetlands, waterways, and the most random bird watching spots thanks to eBird Hotspots. And I hear the same story from other birders too. The feature that Lareen is talking about on the website can also be done on the app, but it's a bit clunky. You can enter your location or the location of where you want to go and the hotspots will appear on the radius you've chosen. If my brain is feeling a bit tired, instead I will do a Google search for the word eBird and the place where I want to go. This brings up the eBird website and a hole is to Bird website and a holistic birds that can be seen there. I sometimes also Google my local council name and eBird to see all the birds that have been recently seen in my area, and that is awesome. I've been using eBird and Merlin since I started my birding journey. This means that my life list, the list of birds that I've seen so far is all in eBird and Merlin. This is so convenient because I can easily pull up the list of birds I've seen, and Merlin even displays a blue tick next to the birds I've seen before. It also shows if the bird is unreported, uncommon or rare in the area. That being said, like all citizen scientists generated information, make sure you also use your own common sense and your bird knowledge when looking at apps like Merlin. For example, Merlin and eBird might say that a bird is uncommon in the area, but it's actually migratory and comes once a year. So clearly lore and I are in love with eBird and Merlin. Technology has made bird watching accessible for many beginners, and we are all about it.
Lareen: When I first started on eBird, obviously, I'm like, “Well, how do I use this? How does it work?”. So a really good thing is that if you go onto the website, they've got videos, they've got little free short courses. They've got how to use this. When you're counting birds, how do you count them? How do you not double count them? What if you're doing it with a group of people and it's really straightforward? There's always Frequently Asked Questions and help. But I just think the easiest thing is to just get the app or I, you know, set yourself up with a profile on the web version, either version, and just start a personal hotspot for your front garden or your patio and just start logging birds. And as you use it, simply, you know, that simple way, I think we just get, start to get the hang of it and then you can, you know, then you start to find out more about it as you use it. I'm sure somewhere on their website they would have a whole thing about privacy, but when you choose a hotspot, so for example, I did one for my Dad's. And he doesn't want people to know where he lives or what's going on, so I actually just sort of went around the corner somewhere and logged it there, and then you can change the coordinates to, you know, my backyard or just something simple like that. And when you set up your profile, you can choose whether to make yourself public so people can see who you are and what you, you know, what sort of birding you do, or just be totally a. So when I look on a list of what's been seen, say at the local lake, it might say someone saw two Pacific Ducks, and it just says ‘anonymous eBird’. So I dunno anymore about that person at all. And I can't see what anybody has logged at their personal space. I they just don't show up when you're searching so nobody can find what I've been logging at home. So I guess for the first time we are going on holiday interstate in a few months’ time and I thought. While we are there, let's clock up a few new birds we dunno about. So actually I've gone onto ebird.org and I've searched that area and it's got different colors. So some of the hotspots where a lot more birds have been seen are a lot more checklists, which means a lot more people have been there. Because there's a lot more bird or something special. I've checked on some of those and looked, oh yes. So when we are there, we wanna have a day out. We can go to this lake or that reservoir, or this bushland or this forest. So in that sense, it's, you know, I'm sort of already looking forward to a few days of finding some new birds. Because I've been able to use this and some. Otherwise, you just wander off to some, you know, reserve and might not see anything. So in that sense, I think it's gonna make, we're not that, it's not a birding holiday, it's just a relaxing holiday. But we'll be able to do some interesting birding, which will be more interesting, I think. And actually when we were in Mildura last year, there's a big lake there called Lake Ranfurly, just on the edge of the city. And you go there and you think doesn't realise anything here, but I checked on the hotspot for, for the lake. And there were Red-necked Avocets, which I'd never seen before, with long pointy bills. And there were about 300 Black Swans. And there were a couple of other things, which when we looked, we saw them little tiny birds creeping around the edge of the lake. So I would not have thought there was anything there if it hadn't been for eBird. I think it just makes, you know, it just makes it a bit more interesting, doesn't it? I think I just recommend people just have a look at it and try it out and give it a go. For me, it's really expanded what, where we go and it's sort of opened up a whole new way to, to go out and do things. I think it's, yeah, just have a go basically. Don't have to, you don't have to know very much at all. And it doesn't matter if you see birds that you don't know. You don't have to log them. You just log the ones that you know and you get better over.
Kirsty: eBird has also helped me find some interesting places to go birding while I'm on holidays. I even use it when I'm away on business and wanna do a morning bird watch before starting my day. I also have a similar story to Lareen. My parents and I used it to find a dam next to a silo in the middle of nowhere, just outside of Bendigo, and there were hundreds of Plumed Whistling-ducks. Truly a sight to be seen. Thanks eBird! One of the places that Loreen has discovered with the help of eBird is a wetlands in Mount Barker, which is about 30 minutes drive from Adelaide city centre.
Lareen: I didn't even realize for quite probably 30 years now, there's been this artificial wetlands created to take the stormwater run off and the outflow from the treated water, from the treat water treatment plant. And we're like, “Ah, okay. This is interesting”. So we went for a walk there. Um, and then when we got to the sort of lake area, we're like, “Gee, there's all these sort of birds!”. There's these Blue-billed Ducks and I'm just in love with them. You don't really get them anywhere else, and I didn't even know that they existed, and I'm like, “Oh, they're on this list. I wanna see one”. I've since found South Australian Birders group. I've joined South Aussie Birding Facebook page and can find out where people are, where should we go and what should we do. Everyone says, “Go to Laratinga Wetlands at Mount Barker”. Another few things that were there that I hadn't seen until recently is a Pink-eared Duck, which are just beautiful. They're like stripy and got this little pink dot on them, and I knew from the eBird list that they, they were there, so I was determined to see. Luckily we did! We actually went on a walk a few weeks ago and they were there. So, you know, you might not see everything every time, but when you don't know what to do, you can think, “Oh, let's see what people have been noticing recently. And let’s take another drive up there and see what's, see what's showing up there, or try a different time of the day. We should go a lot earlier this time”. I did actually get out early to go there and see them. They might not have been there, but there's still the excitement of what might, what you might.
Kirsty: Along with using eBird to find new birds and places to visit, Lareen has also enjoyed joining some birder communities to help her develop her bird watching skills.
Lareen: So we've never really been part of anything to do with birds. We used to be a in a Friends of National Parks group like years ago, and then we had kids and kind of dropped out of that. But recently we thought we would join Birds SA in the hope of going on some of their field trips, and then more experienced people being able to tell us what we are seeing or when what we are hearing. We actually went back to Laratinga Wetlands with the Birds SA group for a new member's walk a few weeks ago. It was with them that they showed us where the Pink-eared Ducks were, and then they also saw these little tiny grebes, which I'd never seen before. And I'd seen them on the hop spot, you know, on the checklist, and I'm like, “I wanna see those!”. And going with them, they were able to say, “Oh look, here they are creeping around the reeds at the edge!”. And so like, oh wow. I've finally seen them. And then I've also joined the South Aussie Birding Facebook page, which is people are really friendly. You don't have to know anything about birds, really. It's about, “I saw this bird. And I dunno what it is or I think it's a this, but maybe it's a that”. And if people have got questions about where to go or, “I wanna see some shorebirds, where's a good place to go this week?”. So everyone's really good at sort of just sharing. They've probably got a sort of general birding, Facebook friendly group in each state, I'd imagine, each state and territory. And then I also came across Women Birder's Australia Facebook page, which is also a very supportive group. People sharing photos, what they've been out doing on the weekend, or I think some of them are really helpful if you want some advice and things like that. And they were actually two posts recently have been actually talking about the safety aspects of women going out birding on their own. And I thought that was a very good conversation, you know, how to stay safe and be aware and, and maybe asking other people if there are any sort of dodgy places not to go to. So, you know, safety's actually quite important. If you're after a particular bird, you're like, I really wanna see this. You sometimes don't think about that.
Kirsty: Lareen has always wanted a nice camera to take photos of birds. After saving up her money last year, she was able to treat herself.
Lareen: I didn't wanna spend a lot of money because I just intend to chuck things in the car and off we go. But I went onto the web and I searched and there was a Woman Birder somewhere, I dunno where she was. And she'd tried out two or three different cameras and showed you different types of shots you could get with each one. So I ended up just getting a camera for just, I think it was $450. Just from Officeworks, Panasonic, it's a Lumix TZ80 if people wanna particularly know. It's just an easy point and shoot. But it does do zoom and it's got automatic. You just basically point it and shoot it and it does everything else. You can do fancier stuff with it and I'm just starting to learn how to do that. But if you just wanna be able to take pictures of the birds you see and uh, zoom in a bit, it's really helpful. Quite often I'm normally sort of out birding with my husband and he's really good at spotting things, but he doesn't identify them and I'm like, Do I look through the binoculars or do I take a quick picture? Because then I can zoom in and we can double check what we think it is. Sort of use it half the time for ID-ing. And then more recently I've studied to sort of get a bit more creative with the shots I take, and I actually put it together, a little book of the birds I'd seen in a particular period and just a little one to look back on. So that was quite nice just to remember our birding outings, getting quite creative with it really.
Kirsty: Technology is there to bring joy to bird watchers and provide important data to scientists and decision makers, but it should never be at the expense of the health of birds. Listen to Episode 21 with Golo and Episode 32 with Kim to discover how you can care for birds while using eBird and taking bird photos. And friends, think really carefully about the comments you write in eBird and on social media. Don't reveal exactly where you saw a bird, or it may get too many human visitors knocking on its. Many thanks to Lareen for sharing her bird, watching love, and her bird watching tips. The episode notes and the Weekend Birder website provide links to more information so you can get out and give it go.
