#1 Birder

This chapter discusses how the author became the number one birder in Dutchess County through eBird, a site launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology along with the National Audubon Society. There are a lot of things that scientists do with eBird data, including the creation of heat maps, or occurrence maps, which show the movement of a particular species as it migrates. The maps are used in conservation projects like Bird Returns, run out of the Nature Conservancy. However, many birders in the field are not thinking about producing data for research or conservation; they are more focused on having a big list. Indeed, eBird has tapped into the competitive emotions of humans. The difficulty with measuring one's ability through eBird is that some of the best birders do not use eBird. It also happens that birders make mistakes, logging in birds they thought they saw but misidentified.