eBird V iNat (ex Kaka kura thread)

[paradoxdinokipi]

What's wrong with iNaturalist? Both are valid platforms for citizen science and I don't see a particular reason for someone to not use iNaturalist, especially someone more casual and not solely interested in birds. I also much prefer the community ID aspect of iNat compared to eBird but eBird is definitely better for population data, and as a 'tool' for twitchers given the alerts and everything, as iNat isn't geared towards that function.

[Jan]

I think I agree with Neil Fitzgerald who has said on iNaturalist that this could be an April 1st joke. The bird does appear to have no head and do Kaka wings really look like that?

Reagrding iNaturalist, it is very good for all other organisms apart from birds. As it relies on a photograph to be posted for any record to be made, it is useless for birders as a whole who record what they hear, how many there are and what their behaviour is, plus the habitat they are in and proper ecological ecosystem features.

It also asks you to record 2 birds as 'a pair'. That is quite mad.

The people who promoted iNaturalist in NZ at the start are and never have been birders. I have been at meetings with them and they show little understanding of avian behaviour and characteristics. Take this onboard, all you young birders who post on it. Some of the id. for bird photos is woeful.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

I am told there is a video of this bird, and other sightings, so my comment about April one was unwarranted.
Regarding iNat, you pretty much said it, Jan. iNat is not so much designed for birders, or at least some category of them, and that is it's strength. eBird is much more geared toward recording full lists and effort, and that has great value, but it is nowhere near as user friendly for casual observations of interesting things here and there, which I bet suits the majority of 'citizen scientists'. Or maybe iNat is a gateway drug leading to eBird. Anyway, I feel like we've had this debate before.

[Jan]

There is a neighbour near us who says he sees Cirl Buntings frequently but he only does iNaturalist so he never records the sightings as he can't get a photograph. WTF?

[paradoxdinokipi]

I think I agree with Neil Fitzgerald who has said on iNaturalist that this could be an April 1st joke. The bird does appear to have no head and do Kaka wings really look like that?

Reagrding iNaturalist, it is very good for all other organisms apart from birds. As it relies on a photograph to be posted for any record to be made, it is useless for birders as a whole who record what they hear, how many there are and what their behaviour is, plus the habitat they are in and proper ecological ecosystem features.

It also asks you to record 2 birds as 'a pair'. That is quite mad.

The people who promoted iNaturalist in NZ at the start are and never have been birders. I have been at meetings with them and they show little understanding of avian behaviour and characteristics. Take this onboard, all you young birders who post on it. Some of the id. for bird photos is woeful.

??? Woeful misunderstanding of iNaturalist aswell as eBird!!! Everything you state relies solely on the quality of the OBSERVER/USER that inputs their data into these websites, iNaturalist aswell allowing for audio recordings & field sketches so painting it as 'mandatory to have a photograph' is woefully inaccurate!!
I find identification on eBird can be even worse than iNaturalist as unless it's a rarity that has to go through reviewers (a process which I still don't entirely agree with especially with seemingly how few there are in NZ, of course I appreciate & gladly support all the work that are done by these volunteers), whilst yes there may be iders who do not understand key features as birds aren't their strong suit/are just getting started there is still an active base of bird iders who actively go through and correct these ids and punctually (again as anyone can id and thus ids can get actually get done!!), I've seen many a misidentified gull, cormorant etc. lounging around on eBird media, with many other sketchy reports with no comments and no judgement on what the observer actually saw completely accepted as these species are not 'under review' and only a very limited subset of eBird reviewers have to thus unconfirm and email eBird users in hopes they change their ids, meanwhile with iNaturalist an incorrect id can be quickly found by a user who notifies a few other competent people and the id quickly changed to a correct one.
And to quote "it is useless for birders as a whole who record what they hear, how many there are and what their behaviour is, plus the habitat they are in and proper ecological ecosystem features." Whilst again like I've stated eBird is by far BETTER for population data as that's one of its main functions (unlike iNaturalist), it still depends on the user to correctly apply these which can thus also be added to iNaturalist in the forms of comments, description and tags?? Many an eBird checklist are random lists, incompletes, incidentals, lists with Xs and do you write comments on behaviour, habitat & ''ecological ecosystem features'' on every single checklist you do for every single species?? This is again such an arbitrary & elitist way to classify what site is for the 'birders' and 'casuals' that simply does not make sense, whilst of course the average eBirder would be better at birds than the average 'iNatter', but the quality of users varies so heavily and extremely on both sites that I see no reason to say 'one is better than the other' and the majority of people I know are frequent users of both sites.
iNaturalist also has another benefit over eBird in sharing of sensitive locales for birds, whilst on eBird if you want to obscure a species thats eg. sensitive nest, roosting bird, ... you'd either hide the checklist (thus unaccessible to researchers aswell), give an inaccurate/obfuscated position for the locale (also unhelpful to researchers), iNaturalist allows users to obscure their data whilst still retaining the original coordinates which can then be shared by the observer to researchers if interested, thus I simply don't find this snobbery against iNaturalist warranted at all, both platforms can be used in conjuction and there was no need for the snide remarks.

[Jan]

This complete rant is ridiculous. I did not make snide remarks nor am I a snob. I am 60 yrs older than you, not that that should make any difference, but actually how long have you been birding? Did you contribute to the first 2 or 3 Atlases of the Birds of NZ? iNat is wonderful for most organisms but NOT birds. Yes it may help a random photographer id a bird, I agree with that, and eBird has problems as well of course. How about you see whether the systems in OZ are any better?

[invertebratist]

Paradoxdinokipi seems so infuriated! Please calm down...

Nevertheless, it is definitely not appropriate to say that eBird is ''more professional'' or ''better'' than iNaturalist, even if the subject is limited to birds.

I think some people in this thread have only used iNaturalist app (which is absolutely useless other than for uploading phone images), but the browser version, iNaturalist.nz or iNaturalist.org, allows you to use huge amount of functions. A lot more than eBird's, actually. But very time consuming to get used to. If you don't have 1000 observations on iNaturalist, you probably haven't even noticed half of its useful functions.

iNat accepts records of dead birds, footprints, bones etc and that alone is a huge advantage over eBird. Also eBird has way more suspicious records than iNaturalist because the identification isn't democracy and many people don't upload proper explanation / evidence.
But still, eBird's advantage on bird counts is enormous. iNat actually allows you to include counts just like eBird, but the user interface is pretty shitty so I wouldn't spend my time explaining it.

It's great that we have both!

[Jan]

Did I say anywhere that eBird is more professional? It may not be the choice for random birders, I get that. If you only have an incidental view of a bird and want to id it, you can post on the fb site New Zealand Bird Identification and get immediate replies from ornithologists, not professional ones most of the time.

I found the video of the Kaka kura on Birds of NZ fb page and it is not a hoax. Great bit of film.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

I have split these posts from the thread "Kaka kura/Bright Orange Kaka iNat observation Great Barrier Island" viewtopic.php?f=9&t=14288 as it was getting off topic.

[judah_bird]

This complete rant is ridiculous. I did not make snide remarks nor am I a snob. I am 60 yrs older than you, not that that should make any difference, but actually how long have you been birding? Did you contribute to the first 2 or 3 Atlases of the Birds of NZ? iNat is wonderful for most organisms but NOT birds. Yes it may help a random photographer id a bird, I agree with that, and eBird has problems as well of course. How about you see whether the systems in OZ are any better?

Making a statement about age and your contribution to NZ bird atlases is wild and shouldn't mean anything about anyone's opinion in this argument (/ invalidate it). Both Ebird and iNaturalist have nothing "wrong" with them and are both great citizen science platforms. However some of your points around iNat are simply not true. You can submit audio and add notes around behavior, habitat, and so on. Just like adding a comment on eBird. Both have pros and cons, and are completely acceptable platforms to use for any submission of records for birds. Why bring up the platform being used in the first place?