[Read Part I: Why]

As part of our ongoing effort to move the entire MigrantWatch database to eBird, we will be asking you to undertake a few simple steps. Doing this will ensure that all your existing data are safely transferred to the eBird database, and are copied to your eBird account.

Here is the sequence of events:

We encourage you to please visit Bird Count India for more about eBird, tips for its use, and related topics.

Please also see Part 1 of this post in which we have outlined how (and why) MigrantWatch data are being moved to eBird.

Do write to us at mw@migrantwatch.in if you have any questions or need any assistance about migrating to eBird.

Since 2007, MigrantWatch has brought together hundreds of birders across India to pool our observations of migratory birds. Over the years MigrantWatchers have collectively contributed more than 30,000 observations — a commendable effort indeed!

in the future, we’d like to make it more enjoyable and easy to share bird sightings. We’d also like to make the information contributed as valuable as possible for research and conservation. In order to achieve these goals we need to transition to the next level. This is where eBird comes into the picture.

eBird has a lot to offer for the birdwatcher, for example:

• a global, birder-friendly platform – eBird is used by tens of thousands of birders across the world to maintain their birding lists. It currently holds millions of bird records and is very easy to use.
• a comprehensive database for your observations – When you go out birding you watch all birds, and not just migrants. eBird enables you to upload complete lists of the birds you saw during a particular trip. This means you have the convenience of keeping a full record of all your birdwatching sessions at one place.
• exciting features to enhance your birdwatching experience – eBird makes it easy to upload your birding lists, allows you to explore your records through exciting visualizations, helps you maintain your life lists and makes sharing your bird lists very simple. You can also embed photos, videos or sound files to accompany each sighting. What’s more, you can use a smartphone app to submit data to eBird.
• higher quality data for research and conservation – Complete lists, as encouraged by eBird, provide information on not only which species are present, but also about which ones are absent. This kind of information is of greater value than presence-only information. The data on eBird is also ported up to the Avian Knowledge Network and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, through which anyone can explore and download all the data.
• increasing use in India – over the past 1.5 years, birdwatchers in India are increasingly using eBird to maintain their birding records and to run bird projects. eBird in India is administered by the Bird Count India partnership, of which MigrantWatch is a member, together with a large number of other Indian groups. Currently, over 1.7 million bird observations have been uploaded by Indian birders, thus making eBird the largest database on birds of India.

As you know, MigrantWatch has been partnering with eBird since 2013 and we have been encouraging you to upload your observations through eBird. A large number of MigrantWatchers have now completely moved to eBird to log their observations. Our next step is to migrate the entire MigrantWatch data to eBird during which all your MigrantWatch observations will be safely transferred to the eBird database and to your account in eBird.

As part of this exercise you would be required to do a few simple things to transfer your MigrantWatch records to eBird, which are described in Part 2 of this post: How.

The latest news at MigrantWatch has been emailed to all participants via the May/June 2014 issue of our round-up. You can see an archive of these messages here.

If you are registered with us, but haven’t received this email, please check your spam folder; and add mw@migrantwatch.in to your address book. Please send us a message if you have any questions.

Pied Cuckoo migration and monsoon winds. Illustration by Rohan Chakravarty

As regular MigrantWatchers know, we run a Pied Cuckoo Campaign every year, from May to August. The idea behind this campaign is to better understand the timing of migration of the species, as it wafts across the Arabian Sea from east Africa to land on our soon-to-be-green land. More specifically, this applies to the population of Pied Cuckoos that migrates to central and northern India; in southern India, the species can be seen year-round (as you can see from these nice eBird maps on the Bird Count India website).

Over the years (the campaign started in 2009), your sightings of Pied Cuckoo have enabled a better understanding of its migration in relation to the onset of the monsoon. You can see some summaries of the information collected on various MigrantWatch blog posts, including an analysis of the very first campaign, a comparison between 2009 and 2010, and animated map of Pied Cuckoo sightings, and a summary of four years of arrivals in relation to the monsoon.

Please do be on the looking for the species, and remember that you can contribute your observations to either MigrantWatch or eBird.

We are happy to announce that the MigrantWatch database has now crossed 30,000 reports of Indian migrants. The 30,000th report was of 50 Rosy Starlings from near Basni in Chhattisgarh. It was uploaded by veteran MigrantWatcher Mr Arun MK Bharos, pictured here.

Mr Bharos was profiled on this blog earlier, and you can see all his MigrantWatch sightings here.

Here are links to the announcements of earlier landmarks: 25,000th sighting | 20,000th sighting | 15,000th sighting | 10,000th sighting

The growing database of migrant sightings owes its existence to participants like Mr Bharos and all other MigrantWatchers. Thank you for all your efforts!

Species names in MigrantWatch have remained unchanged since the start of the project, and an update is long overdue. We have now changed the names of some of the species in the MigrantWatch database, following following recent revisions in taxonomy and nomenclature.

As part of our efforts to integrate more closely with eBird, we decided to follow the eBird naming system, which, in turn, is synchronized with the Clements Checklist of the Birds of the World.

A practical consequence of this is that it is now much easier for you to upload your MigrantWatch sightings to your eBird account if you wish to do so. Note that the scientific names of species in MigrantWatch now match Clements/eBird exactly, and the English names are the same as if you set your preferences in eBird to “English (India)” as recommended for Indian birders.

A concise summary of changes is given below for your convenience (the complete list of changes can be downloaded here: MW name changes 2014-03-23). We urge you to refer to this list before submitting observations.

Both English and scientific names changed

English name changed

Scientific name changed

MigrantWatcher Subhash Gogi spotted and photographed a ringed Demoiselle Crane at Khichan village, Jodhpur district, Rajasthan on the afternoon of 6th March 2014. The ring on the bird was red-coloured and bore the number 667.

Further inquiries revealed that the crane was originally ringed in Mongolia on 24th July 2013.

We encourage MigrantWatchers to keep a lookout for ringed birds, as they provide vital information about the fascinating phenomenon of bird migration, which is still poorly understood.

Photo: Subhash Gogi

While attending college in Manipal, Ramit Singal spent all his spare time carefully documenting the birds of the area. Ramit has now combined his sightings, photos and audio recordings into a book, with accompanying CD.

You can read more about Ramit and his book A Birder’s Handbook to Manipal in these articles in The Hindu | Times of India | DNA | The Manipal Journal.

Ramit has also written a lovely blog post on MigrantWatch, titled Manipal in the Winter. You can see Ramit’s 600+ MigrantWatch sightings and photos here, and his bird recordings are on xeno-canto.

Many congratulations, Ramit!

Over the past year, we at MigrantWatch have had a series of discussions with the people who run the global bird listing platform eBird. The motivation for these discussions was this question:

How can we make it more enjoyable and easy to share bird sightings, and at the same time make the contributed information as valuable as possible for research and conservation?

MigrantWatch has limitations in both of these respects. One of the main aspects of sharing bird sightings is having a user-friendly and feature-rich web platform. We haven’t done all that badly in this regard, and take the opportunity to thank Pavithra Sankaran (web design) and Anush Shetty (web development), and a list of many others, for all the volunteer effort put into making the MigrantWatch website and database. But at the same time, it is a huge task to maintain and further develop the site so that it best suits the needs of all of us birders.

A second limitation is the kind of information that MigrantWatch asks for. We collect “presence-only” information, which means MigrantWatchers upload the date and location of sightings of migrants. This says when a species was seen, but, crucially, doesn’t say when a species was not seen. So, for example, it’s difficult or impossible to tell why there are no reports of Grey Wagtail from Indore in August 2013: is it because no-one was looking for them, or because they truly weren’t there? One solution to this problem is to collect complete birding lists of all species seen on a trip. This says: “X went birding at this location on this date and saw a number of species, but not Grey Wagtail”.

Also, in addition to regular queries about migrants, we get a lot of questions from participants related to non-migratory birds too. Clearly, migrants are not the only birds of interest!

For the above reasons, we are forging a closer relationship with eBird. The main reasons are that (a) eBird is a very easy-to-use and feature-rich site for maintaining your birding records, and (b) it focuses on encouraging birders to upload complete lists of the birds they saw during a particular trip. More details in the following points.

• It is a mature platform, used by tens of thousands of birders across the world to maintain their birding lists. It currently holds more than 150 million records of birds globally. This means it is a safe and reliable platform for our bird lists.
• It has many features to make it easier to upload your species lists, including species with uncertain identification. It also has features to explore your own lists, and you can download your lists into an excel file for use offline.
• Another nice feature of eBird is that your day’s list is available at a unique URL, which means that you can share and email your list with your friends as soon as it is entered into the system. An example of such a list is here: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S13041578
• You can also embed photos, videos or sound files to accompany each sighting: these are particularly useful as supporting information for the identification of difficult or unusual species.
• There are multiple ways to use eBird: through the website (www.ebird.org; this is the preferred way) or using a smartphone app.
• All information on eBird is available to explore through maps, charts and tables. The data on eBird is also ported up to the Avian Knowledge Network and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, through which anyone can explore and download all the data.

Do try out eBird is you haven’t already, and let us know what you think.

From now on, we recommend the following:

• If you have a complete list from a birding trip: upload to eBird only
• If you have a partial list, with migrants and non-migrants: upload to eBird only
• If you want to report individual sightings of migrants, first or last of season, or general sightings: upload to MigrantWatch or eBird, not both
• For any individual sightings of Pied Cuckoo: upload to MigrantWatch or eBird, not both

We will integrate the information coming into both sources (eBird and MigrantWatch) into our monthly email round-up and in future reports. So even if you switch completely over to eBird, you will still be contributing to MigrantWatch!

What will happen to your existing sightings in MigrantWatch?

For the time being, these sightings are safe in the MigrantWatch database, which of course will continue to grow. At some point in the future we may consult you about whether you would like to import your sightings into eBird, which we can help you do. Either way, the main thing is to continue to go birding, note your bird sightings, and share them on a free and open platform!

We look forward to hearing your feedback on these changes.

Many MigrantWatchers participated in the first global Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) in Feb 2013. People across India watched birds for 15 min or more, wherever they were, and uploaded the lists to the eBird listing platform. The results (pdf) were very impressive! It’s very easy to take part in this year’s GBBC, and if enough birders in India take part, it may be possible to track the changing fortunes of Indian birds through this activity, just as others do for the US and the UK through similar events. So please do join in, with your friends and family! The GBBC2014 announcement is pasted below.