Subscribe

RSS Feed (xml)

Powered By

Skin Design:
Free Blogger Skins

Powered by Blogger

Saturday, December 16, 2006

New eBird mapping tool rocks!

If you haven't seen the new Google mapping tool in eBird, its time to give eBird another look.

In the past, it was fairly easy, but still a bit cumbersome in eBird to add new sightings from new locations. Either you had to use the slow mapping tool, or open up something like Google Earth and toggle back and forth to add latitude and longitude readings from Google Earth into eBird.

No more. Now you can add new sighting locations very quickly using the new Google mapping tool directly in eBird.

The other day I had a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker fly up onto a tree while I was in my car sitting at a light. I never reported it to eBird, even though it was my first of season sighting, because it was just a little bit inconvenient to go through the three minute process to set up a new sighting location in eBird.

But yesterday, with the new mapping tool, I was able to add the new location and report my sighting in less than a minute.

So, if you've struggled with adding new locations in eBird in the past, give it another look. Its fantastic and easier to use than ever.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is awesome! I love eBird but have always been annoyed by the slowness of creating a location. I've been slacking on my checklists because of this but will go back to using eBird.

Bill Pulliam said...

Unfortunately the new tool is essentally useless over a slower dialup connection; the old tool was workable. This leaves those of us in outer rural areas (where all the birds are) out in the cold, and back to using paper maps or carting our GPS around with us all the time.

birdchaser said...

Bummer. At least you have access to birds.

Nature Blog Network Fatbirder's Top 1000 Birding Websites