Would you be willing to contribute text for a common species in your area? Or maybe a photo of a missing species? Thanks to John Abbott who has generously offered to review and edit contributed text. Let’s keep him busy!

Description and ID text

Species text should be a minimum of a couple of paragraphs. There is really no upper limit to how much text the app can handle, but in general we should try to keep it brief enough that users in the field can quickly find the information they need.

Our goal is to have text for every species of around 50-200 words for each of the following sections:

Description: include a description of each of the field-identifiable adult forms
Identification: include a description of differentiating this species from similar species
Habitat: especially information that will help a user in the field find this species
Natural History:
(Optional) Seasonality and Distribution
(If applicable) Taxonomic or Nomenclatural notes

A great place to start is by reviewing Odonata Central’s “Identification pages” such as this one for Vivid Dancer. Note that the text on the Odonata Central “Identification pages” were originally targeted to the southwestern US, and so sections such as comparison species and range descriptions are not adequate for an app targeting all of North America.

It would be great to get some text contributions in French and Spanish as well. Or, if you are interested in helping with translating into these languages, please get in touch.

Of course, we would credit you in the app and anytime your text was used. The credits will look something like this (Note that this example is made up!)

Contributed: Dan Tallman Aug 30, 2015
Expanded: John Garrett Aug 31, 2015
Edited: John C. Abbott Sept 5, 2015
Revised and expanded: John C. Abbott Sept 30, 2015

So, if you’re interested head to dragonfly text submission form where you can find instructions to submit the text. If you have friends or colleague who might be interested please share this information with them and encourage them to get in touch with us. Everyone who contributes text for at least one species will also be eligible (if they wish) to participate in beta testing.

Thanks in advance,

The Dragonfly ID team

The post Help us with the Dragonfly ID app! appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

A mobile icon is now superimposed in the bottom left corner of any photos that appear in the apps. You can curate the best photos to feature in the apps by clicking on “Suggest Changes” under a photo and suggesting that a photo be included or excluded from mobile apps. Our goal is to include several high quality images for each class of a species (adult male, male in non-breeding plumage, female, teneral, immature, etc.) in the app, and you can help us get there!

Another improvement is that your photographer page now lists how many of your photos appear in the app, as well as how many photos you have in each of the categories (birds, dragonflies, butterflies and bumble bees). Another great way to track what you have been photographing!

View which photos of yours appear in the apps, and how many photos of each category you’ve submitted.

The post August updates to photo site appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

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The two main views for checking on sightings are the maps view and the abundance charts.

Maps

This view is straight forward and provides all sightings of a species with eBird reports from the past 30 days. You can zoom and pan the maps to search a broader area or for a more close up view.

Abundance Charts

Abundance Charts provide bar graphs that show how frequently a species is reported based on the Filter settings for that location. Only those species within the time and distance settings are shown in the list.

How to customize the lists

Filters allow you to customize the search by proximity to your location and how recently the sightings were made. You can change the search distance, miles or kilometers, and the timeframe. Focus in on just the birds that have been reported a single park,  or all sightings within 50 miles or kilometers. Tap the filter icon in the top right of the BirdsEye screen to make the adjustments. This is perhaps the most powerful feature of BirdsEye.

By working with the filter options you can adjust the view for your current location, any hotspot or one of your designated ‘Favorites’

Here’s how to adjust the filter settings in ‘Nearby Birds’, but the same instructions also work when looking at a specific hotspot in the ‘Browse by Location’ or ‘Favorite Locations’ sections of BirdsEye:

1. Under ‘Nearby Birds’ tap the funnel icon in the upper right of the screen.
2. Drag the ‘Distance to search’ slider to the appropriate range you want to view.
3. Select the ‘Search Timeframe’ for the sightings.

• when the ‘Recent Weeks’ option is selected you’ll get another slider that you can adjust for any sightings within the past 1-4 weeks
• the ‘Current Month’ (iOS member feature) tab provides a view of all birds reported over the past 9 years or so. This option is especially useful when you are birding in a location that doesn’t have a lot of recent eBird reports.
• the ‘Select Months’ (iOS member feature) view also shows sightings for the past 9 years, but only for the specific months you select.  Tap the month(s) to select the ones you want sightings for.  A green checkmark will show to the right for each month selected.  You can select as many months as you want the data for. Perfect for planning trips!

4. Once you’ve adjusted the filters to your liking, tap on ‘Save’ in the upper right of your BirdsEye screen.

5. The species list is now filtered according to your date and range settings, and each chart shows the birds abundance based not the same choices. You will see your current filter settings summarized in the blue bar on the bottom of the screen.  These settings are maintained until the next time you make adjustments to them.

PRO TIP – When you are traveling to areas with few eBird reports, change the distance in the filter settings to 50 miles. This will combine the sightings for a larger area and give you a better idea of the birdlife in the general area.

The post Tip of the month: Using the Filter Settings appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

NOTABLES
Rare Bird Alerts shows you notable birds being seen nearby (up to 250 miles away from your current location if you are a member). These sightings are flagged by eBird as out of range, or out of season. Each alert also has a direct link to the eBird checklist to see comments and photos that the observer included in the checklist. 

ABA RARITIES
Additionally with a membership, BirdsEye provides all the true rarities being seen through out the ABA region*. This includes recent species like Sinaloa Wren in Arizona, Slaty-backed Gull in Washington, and Common Snipe in Newfoundland.

There are still a few differences between the Android and iPhone versions of BirdsEye. We’re trying really hard to make sure the same great features are in both versions. We’ve made a major step in that direction with the addition of the Rare Bird Alerts. Look for more to come.

*The ABA (American Birding Association) area covers most of North America north of Mexico. The BirdsEye ABA Rare feature includes species with ABA codes 3, 4 and 5.

The post Rare Bird Alerts come to Android! appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

The photography bug started with a videocamera and then a Panasonic Lumix ultrazoom around 2005, followed by a series of Nikon cameras (D200, D300, D7000) using a Sigma 50-500 mm lens starting in 2008. Steven was the Oregon-Washington regional editor for North American Birds for 10 years and for Colorado-Wyoming for 3 years. He has served on the Washington Bird Records Committee for 10 years and was author/editor of several books, most recently Birds of Washington, which was published in 2005. His photographs appear in several books, including the Stoke’s Guides and Dennis Paulson’s dragonfly guides.

He would like to thank his patient companions, who endure his lens-bearing chases of creatures great and tiny.

The post March Photographer of the Month appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

Like many birders, we are interested in more than just birds.  We think the functionality in BirdsEye would be fantastic for other flying creatures like dragonflies and butterflies, and we would like to support the outreach efforts of some outstanding citizen science projects.  We are working hard on developing new apps that will help you find butterflies, dragonflies & damselflies in your area, just like BirdsEye currently helps you find birds. If you would like to support this effort, we could use your help by making a donation, contributing your time or pre-purchasing one of the apps.

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The post BirdsEye for Dragonflies and Butterflies appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

We just launched a brand new photography site to compliment BirdsEye, to showcase our many excellent photographers, and to make it easier to contribute your own photos to the BirdsEye project.

You can explore the entire collection of photos, searching by region or photographer. Once you have created a free account, you will be able to submit your own photos, browse all the fantastic photos submitted for any species, vote on your favorites, and let us know if there are any identification errors.

If you have already contributed photos, we can associate your photos to your account once you have created your account on the new site. Just let us know at photos@birdsinthehand.com and we will get you set up.

Remember, you can contribute a high quality bird image to get a free BirdsEye membership to any region, for you or a friend.

We hope you enjoy this early look at the new photo site!

The post New Photo Site in beta! appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

We are excited to announce Pete Myers and Keith Hansen as the January photographers of the month.

Pete Myers has been a birder as long as he can remember, growing up near Baltimore, Maryland, and various countries in Central and South America. He has been photographing birds for over 40 years now. After receiving a Ph.D from Berkeley researching shorebirds in Argentina, along the sandy beaches of northern California, and the Alaskan tundra, Pete traveled to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, where he worked until leaving to become Senior Vice-President for Science at the National Audubon Society.

Various other opportunities distracted Pete from birds and photography for nearly two decades, but he was drawn back in with the new possibilities of digital photography. Pete is also one of the creators of BirdsEye and BirdLog. In addition to BirdsEye, Pete’s images and writing about birds have been published in numerous venues, including Audubon, Natural History, and American Birds magazines, and was featured on the cover of Audubon’s American Birds four times.

Keith Hansen took up illustrating birds in 1976, his senior year of high school. He explored much of California as a young man, expanding his explorations toward Mexico and Central America, the tropical Pacific aboard a NOAA research vessel, and then a foray to the Andes, the Galapagos, and the Amazon of Ecuador. As a visitor and volunteer for the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, he was introduced to the breathtakingly beautiful region of Marin County’s Point Reyes Peninsula. Keith has created bird illustrations for books, scientific journals, magazines, newsletters and logos. His most recent endeavor has been a 14-year project illustrating a book entitled, Birds of the Sierra Nevada: Their Natural History, Status and Distribution authored by Ted Beedy and Ed Pandolfino. Keith lives and works in Bolinas, where people are welcome to visit his studio and view his originals, and purchase prints.  Below are two of his plates from that new guide.

If you are interested in seeing their artwork in person, Pete and Keith have an exhibit opening January 12 at Commonweal in Bolinas, CA. There is also an Artist reception on January 17th from 3-5pm.

Details about their exhibit can be found at the event page.

The post January Photographers of the Month appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.

Please join us in congratulating Jack Jeffrey, this month’s photographer of the month. From a young age, Jack always had a strong affinity for nature. Today, as a wildlife biologist and nature photographer, Jack is still exploring forests, crawling through mud and climbing trees to capture in photographs the essence of the flora and fauna that he loves so much.

Jack has made the Pacific his home for the last 50 years, where he has worked as a wildlife biologist specializing in island ecosystems. In his spare time, Jack is dedicated to photographing the rapidly changing natural history of Pacific islands before many of the native species are lost forever. As a photographer, Jack brings to his images the knowledge gained through years of observation and study of endemic island species. Combining a naturalist’s curiosity with a photographers’ patience and technical skill, he is able to capture the spirit of rare birds, plants and other natural treasures, within his wonderful photographic images. Jack also offers birding and photography tours of the Hawaiian Islands.

Jack contributed the only photo in BirdsEye of the now extinct Po’ouli. In his own words:

In January of 2002, I had an opportunity to assist researchers on Maui, as they tried to capture the last of the remaining Po’ouli known to exist.  This Hawaiian Honeycreeper species was only discovered in 1974. By 2002 only 3 birds remained in a remote rain forest in the Hanawi drainage on the east slopes of Haleakala on Maui.   I was in the area for 10 days and only had two contacts with the bird during that time.

One morning, while photographing forest birds coming to a native mint in flower, I thought I heard the call of a Po’ouli nearby. I found the bird high in an Ohia tree about 100 ft away. I was able to get a couple of shots before the bird disappeared.   Later in the week I had another brief glimpse.  These remaining Po’ouli were only seen on rare occasions over the next two years, and by 2004, only one bird remained, a male, which was captured and held in captivity.  It died later that year.

Found only in Hawaii, the once large subfamily of Hawaiian Honeycreepers (Drepanidanae) are considered an even more spectacular example of evolutionary radiation than the famous Darwin’s Finches.  Since the arrival of man, 60 species has been reduced to just 18 surviving species, several of which are on the verge of extinction.”

Click me

 

Would you like to contribute photographs to the BirdsEye project?   We still need photos for many species from Pacific Islands.  Visit our photo site to see our list of needs.   Everyone who contributes a photo gets a free subscription or copy of one of our apps.

The post December Photographer of the Month appeared first on BirdsEye Nature Apps.