BB2eBird™ — BIRDBASE™ Conversion Software
from CGM Technology Software
BB2eBird™ is a Windows application program that converts collections of sightings stored in a Santa Barbara Software Products’ BirdBase data exchange file into the eBird Record Format (Extended), thereby allowing those sightings to be imported—in “bulk” mode—into the eBird database.
A real-time, online checklist program, eBird has revolutionized the way that the birding community reports and accesses information about birds. Launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, eBird provides rich data sources for basic information on bird abundance and distribution at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. eBird’s goal is to maximize the utility and accessibility of the vast numbers of bird observations made each year by recreational and professional bird watchers. It is amassing one of the largest and fastest growing biodiversity data resources in existence. Please follow this link to eBird (http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about) to read more about its mission, goals, and methodology.
BB2eBird gives you—the BirdBase user—a chance to contribute your accumulated sightings records to this important citizen science archive that will be used by ornithological researchers for decades (and even centuries) to come to inform scientific and conservation policy and land management decisions. Your contribution should not be underestimated: the lifetime of sightings data stored in BirdBase is inaccessible to posterity unless you make an active effort to transfer your records from BirdBase to eBird.
BB2eBird automates much of the hard part of this transfer process. You still must apply some quality control to your sightings records by visually inspecting the accuracy of some of the information, but BB2eBird does the “dog work” for you. The remainder of these instructions detail the steps you need to follow in order to transfer your sightings from BirdBase to eBird.
BB2eBird is shareware. If you use this program, please show your appreciation and contribute to its further development by sending US$10 in cash or by a check in US dollars drawn on a U.S. bank or by an International Postal Money Order to:
Peter R. Bono
CGM Technology Software
Please email your comments and questions to pbono@prba.com.
In the following, we will show filenames and commands to be typed at the command line in the Courier New font. If the command includes some information items you need to provide, we will use the Courier New Italics font to indicate these items.
1. Installing BB2eBird
If you obtain BB2eBird as a download, you should specify that its contents (the executable file, bb2ebird.exe, the configuration file, birdbase.ini, and the instructions file, bb2ebird.htm) be saved in the folder holding the BirdBase program (by default, that folder is \BIRDS). Doing so will let BB2eBird be run in the folder where the BirdBase program runs, which will be most convenient for you when you export sightings data from BirdBase and convert them into the eBird format.
If you receive BB2eBird on a CD or by email attachment, you should copy the bb2ebird.exe and birdbase.ini files to the folder holding the BirdBase program, and use a word processor like Microsoft Word or use a browser like Internet Explorer to view and (optionally) print the instructions file, bb2ebird.htm. When sent by email attachment, these three files might be contained within a single zip archive file. In this latter case, you will need to open the zip file and extract the files to the folder holding the BirdBase program.
2. Exporting Your Sightings Data from BirdBase
To provide very fast performance, BirdBase keeps its data in a proprietary database that is not accessible except via the BirdBase program itself. In order to get your sightings information out of BirdBase, you must use the Display function of BirdBase (from the BirdBase Main Menu) and designate “Data exchange file” as the Output Format.
You may use the various options on the Display Menu to select which collection of sightings records you want to export into a data exchange file. For example, to get all your Mexican sightings into one file, you would perform the following steps:
a) select “Limitations as specified below” as the List Type;
b) check the Geographic checkbox in the “Sightings Limitations”;
c) select “1-1-50” as the earliest date and “12-31-49” as the latest date;
d) click on the OK button;
e) now, in the Geographic Limitation window that pops up, enter MX in the Geographic Limit dropdown box;
f) click on the OK button;
g) in the File Name Entry window that pops up, enter a file name following the rules specified in the window.
Note: If you use DAT as the file extension, your file will be easier to find when you use BB2eBird (see next section for instructions on running BB2eBird). For this example (your Mexican life sightings), we will use MXLIFE.DAT as the Data Exchange File Name.
h) click on the OK button.
When BirdBase is finished, it will display an Information message box that informs you that “MXLIFE.DAT is with the other BirdBase files”.
Note: This means that this new file will be in whatever folder the BirdBase application is running from; by default, this is \BIRDS.
Finally, click OK, and you will be returned to the BirdBase Main Menu.
3. Running BB2eBird
BB2eBird is a Windows application. Use Windows Explorer, My Computer, or Computer (depending on your version of Windows) to navigate to the folder where you placed the BB2eBird executable. Double-click on the BB2eBird file to start it.
Note: As mentioned in section 1, you will find it most convenient to put BB2eBird in the same folder as you have your BirdBase program, because then your BirdBase data exchange files will also be stored there when you follow the steps outlined in section 2 above.
Click on File … Open . Then navigate to the BirdBase data exchange file containing the collection of sightings you want to convert. Click on Open.
Next, select the date format used by BirdBase to store your sightings data: either MM-DD-YY (default) or DD-MM-YY.
Now, click on File … Create CSV. Your eBird Record Format (Extended) file will be saved into the same folder where your BirdBase data exchange file is located.
The eBird Record Format (Extended) file will have the same filename, but its file extension will be CSV.
4. Checking the Quality of your Sightings Records before Importing to eBird
Follow these steps:
a) Open the CSV with Excel (or some other spreadsheet program) and sort all the rows first by column I (date), then by column F (location), then (optionally) by column A (species).
Note: In Excel, to select all the rows, click on the little cell above row 1 and to the left of column A. Then use Data … Sort to specify and carry out the sort operation on all your rows.
b) While still in Excel, compare column D (which gives the count of the species seen) with column E (the comment associated with the sightings record). While the BB2eBird program tries to be "clever" and determine the correct number of individuals seen, the program can still be confused if the sightings comment spells out numbers, contains other numbers (like 10km or 50x or 3500masp), or contains other references to numbers. When you find a discrepancy, simply change the value in column D to reflect the number of individuals seen for that sightings record. Use a "X" in column D (instead of an integer) if you don't know the count of individuals and if you just want to indicate that the bird was seen or heard.
c) (Optional) While still in Excel, you can compare the locations
in column F. You might find that you have different spellings for the same
location. E.g., "Yosemite NP", "
d) Save the file from your spreadsheet program. The now-revised and newly-sorted CSV file is the file you will upload into eBird.
e) Go to http://ebird.org/ebird/MyEBird?cmd=Start and click on the "Import Data" link (along the right side of the screen), once you have logged in.
f) Click on the Browse button. Navigate to and select your CSV file. Click on the Open button.
g) Select the eBird Record Format (Extended) and not the Checklist Format.
h) Click on Upload File. This will start the eBird uploading process. Once the upload finishes, follow the instructions in eBird to complete the process.
Note: If you have not yet registered with eBird, you will need to do this first and create your username and password, so that eBird ‘knows” who you are when you try to upload your sightings data.
Once your file is uploaded into eBird, most probably, you will have to fix the sightings files (called checklists by eBird) in two different ways:
(i) The eBird checklist is NOT identical to the Clements World List (used by BirdBase), so you might have to associate (or “map”) certain species on your BirdBase list with species known by eBird. Where your BirdBase comments have indicated subspecies, this might help you with this so-called "species mapping" process. For example American Herring Gull in BirdBase might need to be associated with (“mapped into”) Herring Gull (American) in eBird.
(ii) Most (or all) of your Birdbase
Locations WILL NOT BE KNOWN to eBird, so you will have to provide GPS
coordinates for each of the locations. It is easiest is to transform the name
of your location into a location already known to eBird —either an eBird
"hotspot" (like
Do all this, and you are done!
5. Other Observations and Recommendations
a) The tricky part of eBird
(nothing to do with BirdBase) is that it wants GPS coordinates for
every "checklist" (which, in eBird land, is all sightings on a
single day at a single location—what BirdBase calls a
"trip"). For example, say you've visited five state parks along
a 100-mile stretch of Highway 101 in a single day (what eBird calls a traveling
count). You might have entered that trip into BirdBase as a single
trip. For eBird, you are either going to have to "tease apart"
those sightings and make 5 checklists—one for each stop where you birded—or you
are going to have to use a broader designation for the location—e.g., a city or
county within the state of
b) BirdBase has no specific place in the database where you can enter the number of individuals seen on a trip to a given location, so the BB2eBird program has to “guess” about the count of individuals. It does this by looking in the BirdBase sightings comment field. If that field is empty or contains nothing that looks like a count, the BB2eBird program uses “X” as the count for eBird. This simply means that the species was seen at the trip location but no other information is available. However, following the suggestions found in the BirdBase Users Manual, if the comment field starts with a number (like “6 males; 2 females”) or a phrase that implies a number (like “pair”), the BB2eBird program will attempt to calculate the count (8 and 2, respectively, in the examples of this sentence). This is not an easy task and fraught with ambiguity and potential for miscalculation of the count, especially for sightings records that were recorded in BirdBase before eBird existed or before importing into eBird became a consideration. That’s why you should perform the Quality Control step 4b above.
To
summarize: you really need to understand the BIG PICTURE—to do
your sightings justice and get them into eBird properly. The BB2eBird
program is an essential part of the process, but it is not the only step
required. You should enter all your future sightings data into BirdBase
with eBird in mind:
** remember to put species count data into the beginning of the comment
field before your other comments
** break down your whole birding day into a number of “single location” trips.
** to anticipate possible future splits of species, mark the subspecies in
the sightings comment field whenever it is known
** enter the data for each location as a separate BirdBase “trip” with its
own checklist and count of species seen and heard.
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