Folks, here’s a “stretched version” of Denise’s note yesterday, just for
fun, eh?

Larry

Note from a birding bud who lives on many listservs. =)

This person is excited, thinks this is the best thing to happen since sliced
bread! In case you haven’t seen it yet—>

From: aznmbirds-request@list.arizona.edu
[mailto:aznmbirds-request@list.arizona.edu] On Behalf Of trose
Sent: Friday, August 04, 2017 7:07 AM
To: aznmbirds@list.arizona.edu
Subject: [AZNMbirds] No Birds – THANK YOU eBird New CHANGE SPECIES Option

OH MY GAWD, this is the BEST thing ever that eBird could have come out
with!!! Yay! LOL.

Anyone who eBirds probably just received an email from eBird letting them
know of the new “Change Species” function they have just implemented. But in
case you didn’t read it in detail or went to the “Change Species” how-to
link, please do!!! (I provide the link in this email near the bottom, as
well).

eBird will now let you change a species in one of your individual eBird
lists, including ALL its accompanying photos, notes, breeding codes, etc.,
in one fell swoop by using the new “change species” option. No more deleting
the species from the list, entering the new, correct one, then reentering
all of its notes and codes and re-uploading its photos. Just choose “change
species” instead, and viola! All gets updated at the same time. Or you can
switch species on just the photos. Or just the audio. Or just one single
photo amongst several. Whatever you need.

Some examples eBird gives are: updating an unidentified gull or shorebird
from a generic species level to its individual species, once it gets
identified. If you’ve uploaded a whole buncha photos and entered copious
identification notes, what a pain it the butt it has been in the past to
delete everything under that species, enter the new species and
copy/save/transfer/reenter all those notes and codes, and then re-upload all
those photos. Not any more!!! Now just one change, and be done with it.

Or, let’s say you accidentally plopped one of your many photos into the
wrong bird’s slot and a fellow birder pointed it out to you? Whoops! Go
click “change species” on that individual photo, and eBird moves it for you
within that list. Awesome!!!

So here’s the link – go look! Pretty darned cool stuff, there.
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/changespecies/

Tonya Holland
Three Points AZ
————————
***Personal case in point if anyone is interested: I very recently updated
all of my listings of the domestic Swan Goose (type) seen at both
Christopher Columbus and Kennedy parks in Tucson, because both eBird (and
the Arizona eBird reviewer team) would prefer that they be entered as
“Domestic Goose species (domestic type)” instead of the more specific Swan
Goose domestic option. Apparently since domestic Swan Geese and Graylag
Geese frequently interbreed and can look like either type, making it often
impossible to determine actual parentage, eBird just wants this domestic
jumble entered at a generic level.

Okay, I love eBird and always want to do things the way eBird requests that
they be done (they have *reasons*!), so I dutifully changed all my lists.
But hey, it’s a DOMESTIC! It’s annoying to most birders to even have to add
them in, in the first place (side note: you SHOULD, by the way – just
because it has no “importance” to you as a species doesn’t meant it
shouldn’t be entered. Entering domestics and escapes is a great way to track
historical progression and expansion of a species if it ever becomes an
established breeding population, and then eventually even perhaps countable
by the ABA, such as the Scaly-breasted Munia in California). But if you’re
like me, it still just seems like really annoying extra work to do all of
the above-described delete/transfer/update steps just for a dumb old
domestic! LOL.

So the new “Change Species” option would have been SOOOOO much easier to
implement than the whole rigamarole that I ended up doing. In the words of
Maxwell Smart, I “missed it by THAT much!”