Date: 12/4/25 7:15 am From: Tobin Brown via groups.io <tobinjbrown...> Subject: [NEBirds] eBird Hotspot updates!
Nebraska birders,
For those of you that use eBird: There are some eBird hotspot features coming through the pipeline, and I was added as a hotspot editor in order to help out with them as they are released. One big thing they are focusing on, along with accessibility, is *data quality*.
To that end I have begun to add some "sub-hotspots" to some popular birding locations. If you've birded Lake McConaughy or Lewis and Clark Lake, you may already be familiar with the concept. The biggest ones are *Branched Oak SRA*, and *Pawnee Lake SRA*. Next time you go birding there, you may see options like "Branched Oak SRA--Lieber's Point <https://ebird.org/hotspot/L54673426>" or "Pawnee Lake SRA--West Shore <https://ebird.org/hotspot/L55619005>". By using these smaller hotspots, we will have fewer long traveling checklists that end up getting excluded from scientific data (15+ miles). Shorter "point count" style checklists are much more useful to science than mega 60+species, 5 hour checklists. So please use these new hotspots whenever possible, thanks!
Also, please feel free to reach out to me if you have any comments on any hotspots that are wrong, or bothering you (wrong name, location etc.) and I can help to get those fixed!
Finally, if you are interested in becoming a hotspot editor, please let me know and I can forward your info along. There are new hotspot features coming soon, and it will take a *lot *of effort and knowledge to get data entered for the *hundreds *of hotspots around the state. Even if you don't want to become an editor, you can improve hotspots by adding habitat photos that show what the birding location is like.
