The shorter the duration and distance, the more valuable the information. Long checklists over large areas provide less information about exactly where and when birds occurred.
When should you start a new checklist?
Any time you...
- Change birding locations
- Change major habitat types
- Change the type of birding you're doing (i.e., go from stationary to traveling or vice versa)
- Have been stationary for more than an hour
- Have been traveling for more than a mile
consider starting a new checklist. Doing so provides more detailed information about where and when you observed the birds on your list!
Pro Tip:
We recommend keeping Traveling checklists
under 5 miles (8 km)
and Stationary checklists
under 3 hours
for your sightings to make the biggest impact for science. However, limiting your checklists to less than one hour or one mile provides even more checklist precision!
I don’t see anything about lists being rejected, but please note the Pro Tips are
very lax compared to the recommendations .
The latest versions of the app do add to the distance traveled any paths traversed before. If you do not use the app, you need to subtract those from your total.
Perhaps the idea is to get a better idea of how many birds and of what species a specific habitat can support, and the smaller areas allow for a more fine-grained analysis.
Ian MacGregor Bella Vista
On Fri, Sep 19, 2025 at 10:20 AM, Glenn <[<000001214b3fcb01-dmarc-request...>](mailto:On Fri, Sep 19, 2025 at 10:20 AM, Glenn <<a href=)> wrote:
> I have a question about the best way to do eBird reports. I often go to the Bald Knob National Wildlife Refuge to do some birding. When I go, I may stay 6 hours. I also drive up and down all the roads, some of them multiple times. I have recently found out that eBird does not use my report if it is over too many hours (I'm not certain what this time frame is - 4 or 5 hours I think), they also do not use a report if it covers too many miles (I think 5 miles is the limit.) The problem, in my opinion, is eBird will decide the report exceeds the limits and ignores the report but doesn't tell me. So I'm all happy knowing I did my duty by reporting my birds, only to find out at a later date they have no record of the rare bird I reported because they rejected my report because it was 3 minutes too long. Anyhow, I'm looking for the best way to report my visits to BKNWR. The refuge does have one central hot spot, and now it has several other more localized hot spots that can be used. If I'm there for 6 hours driving all around, is it best to submit a new report each and every time I enter one of the smaller hot spots areas? With all the driving around I bet I would have to submit at least a dozen reports over that 6 hours. And each time I drive by the central ponds, which may be 5 or 6 times during a visit, is it best to make a new report each time, reporting the same birds, over and over again? If I took the time to count 112 great egrets the first time through, am I supposed to recount them each time because they tend to fly in and out? That would take a lot of time counting and take away from looking for birds. I just want to report what I see the best way. It seems to me like the best way is to report seeing 112 great egrets in the time I was there, in one tidy report, but evidently that isn't the best way. I'm looking for advice on how to do this so I deliver the most useful data but don't spend a majority of my visit creating reports. Thanks.
>
> Glenn Wyatt
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> To unsubscribe from the ARBIRD-L list, click the following link:
> http://listserv.uark.edu/scripts/wa-UARKEDU.exe?SUBED1=ARBIRD-L&A=1
