How to view eBird reports within the State College Bird Club area, and by extension, view any circle of eBird reports on earth.

If you are not familiar with eBird, you can read some introductory information at scbirdcl.org/Sightings.

Use the following multi-step procedure to view the most recent eBird reports from the last two weeks within the State College Bird Club circle; specifically, the 25 mile (about 42 km) radius circle centered at Old Main Building at University Park, PA. Note that this procedure will show you only the most recent observation of each species seen in this circle, but will not show all observations seen. E.g. if there have been 10 sightings of Northern Harriers in the last 2 weeks, this will only show the most recent sighting of the Northern Harriers.

Note: if the steps are not followed exactly as given, the circle of results results may not be displayed. In that case, delete the pages or tabs, and try again from step #1.

1. go to http://www.chicorylane.com/ebird?lat=40.796465&lng=-77.862743&daysback=14&distance=42

2. in the section titled “eBird Functions”, click “Sightings”

3. in that new page, under Functions, click “Search”, wait until the results are displayed below, and then click “Map Results”; or if you only want to read the list of results, you can stop here, and scroll down to see the results.

4. move the cursor to the menu tab “eBird Functions” and select “Map” to create a map with a marker pointing at Old Main

5. with your mouse, right-click** and select “Import Search Area” to create a shaded circle centered on Old Main

6. at a point outside the circle, right-click** and select “Import Search Results”
 
7. you should see a circle of markers with the letter E. Each one is the location of one or more eBird sightings. If you click on a marker, it will either display the sighting data, or it will split into two or more markers.

8. [optional] At the bottom of the page titled “eBird Sightings Explorer” is a list of eBird sighting data in several columns. The second column is the common name, and the list is sorted chronologically on the “Date” column. To sort the list on the Common Name in Taxonomical order, click on “Add Taxon Seq” under “Functions”, and then click on the word “Sequence” at the top of the last column.


The multi-step procedure above results in three separate webpages. You can use your browser “tabs” to keep all three in one webpage. E.g., on a Macintosh, at step #1, hold down the Command key when you click  the link,  and do the same in steps #2 and #4 when you click "Sightings", and "Map".

This procedure can easily be changed for any circle on the globe by changing the parameters lat (latitude), lng (longitude), daysback, and distance (km) in the link shown in step #1. For example http://www.chicorylane.com/ebird?lat=41.023839&lng=-77.653526&daysback=14&distance=10  is for the 10 km circle around the middle of the lake at Bald Eagle State Park. You can also go to the page titled “eBird Sightings Explorer”, click the button Reset, change various parameters, and proceed from step #3.

For more information about this procedure and other capabilities, see http://chicorylane.com/ebird

Acknowledgement: The basic software interface that allows the creation of applications (apps) to retrieve eBird data is provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/CLOISAPI/eBirdAPIs). Using that interface, Dr. John Smith, a retired Professor at UNC, has developed the eBird app that he offers on his website www.chicorylane.com. The procedure above uses that app.

** In most cases, when you right-click on your tracking device (mouse, pad, etc), you will see a list of options. If you do not see a list of options, you need to use an alternate method. E.g., on a Mac, hold down the Control Key while you either right-click or left-click.