NYSOA - eBird & County Listing

Are you an eBird user? Here is a simple tutorial on how you can easily grab your state and county totals from eBird for your NYSOA County & State Listing report.

First, one of the ground rules: MAKE SURE YOU DON’T COUNT SPECIES THAT ARE NOT ON THE Checklist of the Birds of New York State in your totals (e.g. Chukar, or any other NYS species not currently accepted by NYSARC).

Start by printing the latest downloadable mail-in form so you can write the numbers on it (do this even if you are going to enter your data online--it will make transcribing the numbers super easy). As you complete the steps below, write the totals onto page 2 of the form you printed.

PLEASE ENTER YOUR DATA ONLINE if at all possible; otherwise we will have to enter your numbers ourselves. If everyone made us do that, we'd spend about 10 hours on data entry before we could begin compiling. Thank you in advance for your help on this.

When you have written all the numbers on the paper form that you want to submit, you can enter them online.

1. Click My eBird at the top of the screen.
     a. If you see "New York, United States" as the big header, skip b-d.
     b. To the right of the big location header, click Change region.
     c. In the window that pops up, type new y in the first field (labeled Region).
     d. You will see New York, United States (US) below your typing; click on that.

2. Below the big location header (New York, United States), the Species Observed number is your
     NYS LIFE total RIGHT NOW.

3. If you are sure you didn't get any new NYS lifers since 12/31, skip to step 4 below.
   Otherwise, to determine whether you have gotten any new NYS lifers since 12/31:
     a. Click your number of Species Observed below the big big header.
     b. On the next screen, for SORT BY at the right side, select Date: Newest First.
     c. Check the DATE column to see if you got any new NYS lifers since 12/31.
         If you did, subtract them from your current NYS LIFE total.
     d. Go back to your NYS summary page and continue with step 4 below.

4.  For your NYS YEAR total, refer to the first bar chart (Your species by year).
    The second bar represents last year; your NYS YEAR total for last year is to the right of the bar.

COUNTY LIFE TOTALS (as of December 31st of the year just ended):

5. Follow step 1 above to get to your NYS summary page if you're not there already).
All the NYS counties for which you've ever entered records are listed below the bar charts.

6. Click the YEAR column. This will move all the counties you birded in after 12/31 of the
    count year to the top of the list.
    For each county showing a number greater than 0 in the YEAR column:
     a. Click on the number in the LIFE column.
     b. On the next page, click on First Seen above the list of species.
     c. Make sure Date: Newest First is selected at the far right of the First Seen button.
     d. Look at the DATE column. The number to the left of the last life species recorded at the end of
         the year being reported is the life total to enter on your form.
     e. Go back to the list of counties; repeat a-d for each county showing greater than 0 under YEAR.

7. Go back to the list of counties and click the NAME column header in order to alphabetize the list.

8. For each county showing "0" in the YEAR column, copy the LIFE number onto your paper form.

We'll save you the trouble of looking up which counties are in the regions you're reporting. Behold:

Counties in each region

Region 1:

Allegany

Cattaraugus

Chautauqua

Erie

Niagara

plus parts of Genesee, Orleans, and Wyoming

Region 2:

Livingston

Monroe

Wayne

plus parts of Genesee,

Ontario, Orleans, and Wyoming

Region 3:

Chemung

Delaware

Otsego

Schuyler

Seneca

Steuben

Tompkins

Yates

plus parts of Cayuga and Ontario

Region 4:

Broome

Chenango

Cortland

Tioga

Region 5:

Herkimer

Madison

Oneida

Onondaga

Oswego

plus part of Cayuga

Region 6:

Jefferson

Lewis

St. Lawrence

Region 7:

Clinton

Essex

Franklin

Hamilton

Region 8:

Albany

Columbia

Fulton

Greene

Montgomery

Rensselaer

Saratoga

Schenectady

Schoharie

Warren

Washington

Region 9:

Dutchess

Orange

Putnam

Rockland

Sullivan

Ulster

Westchester

Region 10:

Bronx

Kings

Nassau

New York

Queens

Richmond

Suffolk

There are three options: (1) Using pencil & checklist all year; (2) Using spreadsheets to compile your eBird data at the end of the year; and (3) Using AviSys, an ancient (but still beloved by some old-timers like me) computer app.

You can use NYSOA's handy checklist booklet, assign the regions you bird to checkbox columns, and then check birds off as you see them. Or you can print off one paper checklist for each region and check birds off on these throughout the year.

OPTION 2 - using eBird data (for R4, R6, R7, R8, R9, and R10 and any other region where you had NO birds in counties shown in red italics in the chart above)

This works for the regions whose boundaries all coincide entirely with county lines. Getting your totals for these regions using eBird is a lot more complicated than just grabbing your county totals, because NYSOA's Kingbird regions are not defined in eBird. However, if you are comfortable with spreadsheets, these six of the ten regions lend themselves to using your eBird data.

You can download your eBird data as a csv file and then use Excel in the process defined below.
NOTE: R1, R2, R3, and R5 are the regions in western NY whose boundaries cut through counties. The counties that are split between regions are Orleans, Genesee, Wyoming, Ontario, and Cayuga. For these four regions, the old-fashioned checklist & pencil approach may work best in any case.

Note: If you use a different version of Excel from ours, the click-by-click may differ slightly.

Prepare a NYS-only backup spreadsheet plus a working file for each region:
1. Download your eBird data from eBird and save as Excel file (xls or xlsx):
     (a) Open eBird.org, click My eBird and then Download my Data near the bottom of left sidebar.
     (b) Read the statement on the next page and click Submit below it. This will result in an email to
          you containing a link to a zip file you can download.
     (c) Download the zip file. When you click on the zip file, it will show a file called
          MyEBirdData.csv containing all your eBird data -- both inside and outside NYS.
     (d) Open this csv file with Excel.

     (e) If you want to keep all the data for other uses, save the file as eBirdAll.xlsx (or eBirdAll.xls).
     (e) Save the file again as NYS-orig.xlsx (or NYS-orig.xls if you are using an older Excel version).
          The following steps 2 and 3 will be performed on the NYS-orig file.

2.  Remove all sightings that have dates later than 12/31 of the year being reported:
   (a) Click on the Data tab in the Excel ribbon at the top of the window, then Filter (it has a funnel
          icon). This will put a drop-down arrow at the top of each column.
     (b) Click the little arrow at the top of Column L (Date) and uncheck the box next to the current
          year (i.e. the year following the reporting year). Then click OK to filter those new sightings out.

3. Remove all non-NYS entries and save the cleaned-up sheet as a backup file:

Filter mode should still be on.
     (a) Click the little arrow at the top of Column F (State/Province) and uncheck the box next to
          (Select All).
     (b) Check the box next to US-NY. Then click OK. This will hide (not remove) the non-NY rows.

     (d) Click on the NYS-orig.xlsx tab.
     (e) Click the triangle at the upper left corner of the NYS-orig.xlsx sheet, above the row numbers
          and left of the column letters.
     (f) Press Ctrl-C to copy all the data.

     (g) Click on the Sheet1 tab for the new sheet you created. In that blank sheet, click on cell A1 and
          then press Ctrl-V to paste the NYS data into the new sheet. In this new sheet, the non-NY rows
          are really gone (not just hidden).

(h) Delete the original NYS-orig.xlsx sheet by right-clicking its tab, selecting Delete, and then

confirming Delete in the pop-up window.
(i) Press Ctrl-s to save the file (or select File/Save at the top left of the Excel window).

     (a) Save the file again as NYS-working.xlsx (or NYS-working.xls if you are using an older Excel).
     (b) Go back online to My eBird and change your region to New York, United States.
     (c) Click on the big "Species observed" number just below the big New York header.

(d) Scroll to the bottom of your life list and write down the names of Exotics/Escapees, if any.

(e) For each Exotic/Escapee that you wrote down from your life list in step 6(c), do the following

          in your NYS-working file:
          - Select Column B (Common Name) by clicking on the "B" at the top of the column.
          - Press Ctrl-F on your PC (or Command-F on your Mac) and enter the species name in the
            Find what field in the popup.

- You will get a list of all the cells in Column B containing that species name.

The "Cell" column in the list tells you the cell/row where each occurrence appears.

     (f) Save the file (Ctrl-s or File/Save).
7.  Now Create a separate Excel file for each region total you will be reporting:
     Save the NYS-working file as many times as you have region totals to report, naming the files
     R1.xslx, R2.xlsx, etc.

8. Follow the steps listed in the example below for each of the Region files you have created.

2.  Remove all sightings not in the region you are focusing on:
   (a) Click on the Data tab in the Excel ribbon at the top of the window, then Filter. This will put
          drop-down arrows on the columns.
     (b) Click the little arrow at the top of Column G (County) and uncheck Select All in the resulting
          drop-down.
     (c) Click the boxes next to the 7 counties that make up Region 10 (Bronx, Kings, Nassau, New
          York, Queens, Richmond, Suffolk). Then click OK to filter out the other counties.

3. Create a new sheet with only the Region 10 data:
(a) Click the plus sign next to the first tab to create a new sheet.

     (b) Select the original (first) sheet. Click the triangle at the upper left corner of the sheet, above the
          row numbers and left of the column letters.
     (c) Press Ctrl-C to copy all the data.

     (d) Click on the tab for the new sheet you just created. In that sheet, Click on
          cell A1 and press Ctrl-V to paste in the data you just copied (for the 7 counties in Rgn 10).
     (e) (optional) Delete the original (first) sheet.

4.  Remove all but one sighting per species in the new sheet:
     (a) Click Data at the top, then Remove Duplicates.
     (b) In the window that pops up, click Unselect All, and then click Common Name (or Column B)
           and OK.

(a) Select Column B (Common Name) by clicking on the "B" at the top of the column.

- On a PC, press Ctrl-F and enter sp. in the Find what field in the popup.

The "Cell" column in the list tells you the cell (row) where each occurrence appears.

- Delete these rows one at a time (or use the alternative suggestion below).
TIP: Work from the BOTTOM of the spreadsheet upward as you do the deletions.

If you work from the top down, every time you delete a row, all succeeding row
numbers will change!

- If you are comfortable highlighting them all (one by one) before deleting them all at once,
do it that way.

And remember, UNDO (or Ctrl-Z) is your friend if you make a mistake!
To double-check that you got them all, re-highlight Column B and repeat the Find all exercise.

(c) Select Column B and do the same thing with indeterminate (e.g. Greater/Lesser Scaup)
This time, do a Find all on Column B for / (slash)

And remember, UNDO (or Ctrl-Z) is your friend if you make a mistake!
To double-check that you got them all, re-highlight Column B and repeat the Find all exercise.

(d) Select Column B and do the same thing with hybrids & subspecies of species already listed
e.g. Northern Flicker followed by Northern Flicker (yellow-shafted)

NOTE: Do NOT delete "Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)" if that is the only entry you have for
this species! The same goes for any species listed more than once for subspecies.

HOW TO DO IT: This time, do a Find all on Column B for ( i.e. left parenthesis

   And remember, UNDO (or Ctrl-Z) is your friend if you make a mistake!
            To double-check that you got them all, re-highlight Column B and repeat the Find all exercise.

6. Delete rows containing species not on the NYSOA checklist.
   (eyeball check is the only way, sorry!).

7. FINALLY! Look at the number of rows that are left in the spreadsheet and subtract one for line 1
(since it contains headers only). This is your species total for the region!

AVISYS: If you still have it, you can use the old but superb bird listing program called AviSys, which allows you to define geographic regions that encompass multiple counties. You can even define your own locations for regions 1, 2, 3, and 5, which have boundaries not wholly coinciding with county lines. For example, you can set up "Cayuga North" and "Cayuga South" because Cayuga is split between regions 3 and 5. Then you have to manually assign your sightings to those partial counties to derive your regional totals.
Once you have your data assigned to the regions properly in AviSys, the job is easy. However, it’s a bit of a pain syncing between eBird and AviSys.
Note: Jerry Blinn, the creator and maintainer of AviSys, died in 2015. Since that time, a facebook group page was set up by Kent Fiala called AviSys Birding Software, and Kent has been providing some tools and files on his website at avisys.info

Whatever your approach…MAKE SURE YOU DON’T COUNT SPECIES THAT ARE NOT ON THE Checklist of the Birds of New York State in your totals (e.g. Chukar, or any NYS species not yet accepted by NYSARC).