Date: 2/9/26 2:48 pm From: Derek Courtney <derek.dana.courtney...> Subject: eBirding and the Ohio River Gulls
Hi, everyone! This is just a note/plea from your friendly neighborhood WV eBird Reviewers. It has been about a decade since we have had a good Great Lakes freeze-up that has driven big numbers of gulls to the Ohio River and beyond. With that push of the usual Ring-billed and Herring Gulls, birders have found good numbers of black-backed gulls as well as a few white-wingers. The difficult part for us, as reviewers, is that gulls can be incredibly difficult to identify. There are multiple age classes, weird molts, hybrids ... and often times the birds are out sitting at a distance on the river. Sorting through the mess can be something straight out of Dante's Purgatory. I am getting like 10 or 15 ID requests every day from gull photos. And while, overall, WV birders have done a really great job at getting good IDs. There are way too many birds being misidentified. And these are just the ones for which we have demonstrable photographic evidence. The descriptions are getting a little lackadaisical as well. "On river" is never an acceptable description in your details section for an uncommon gull. Likewise, "continuing" is no longer working. We are getting LOTS of "continuing" descriptions but then describing individual birds/age classes/etc. that have not been reported, or in some cases really don't match the photos that are subsequently posted.
This is mostly my fault. I have just been too lenient in the review process for birders who I know are really solid at field identification. And also just trying to reduce some of the comments and replies that I and the other reviewers receive. Usually this doesn't present a huge problem, but it really is turning into an in issue for data quality; and one that we can make efforts to resolve.
So from now on, none of the uncommon gulls will be confirmed without photo confirmation. I hate this, and don't want to discriminate against anyone who doesn't have a camera or digiscoping capability, but the Reviewers have discussed it and this seems the safest way forward.
Also, we are getting lots of really high counts of the typical gulls. Some are going through photos and really making great efforts to do a solid count. But some are identifying huge numbers of gulls from distance without even using a scope. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using a Larus sp. tally for birds that cannot be identified. No one will think less of you. Many of these birds, especially the young ones, can't be identified confidently.
And we also want to remind everyone, that even though we may not confirm your sighting, we will let it go until it appears on the rare bird alert to get word out. And nothing we do as reviewers change your data. If you're confident in your IDs, they stay on your personal list. If you want to string, string on.
Please remember, we are just trying to keep data quality high during this unusual event. Thank you!
