Date: 2/12/26 9:39 am From: Shaibal Mitra <Shaibal.Mitra...> Subject: [nysbirds-l] "Iconic Birds" for eBird Hotspots
Just today I noticed the (presumably) new "Iconic Birds" feature, listing species reported especially often from each eBird hotspot. Species are listed in descending order by the degree to which they are reported more frequently at a hotspot relative a regional frequency (though the spatial scale for regional comparison is not clear, as the example to follow will show).
This is an interesting idea, presumably intended to assist visiting birders in planning efficient routes to find target species, and it strikes me as something of a new frontier in terms of how eBird will shape, and be shaped by, the sociology of birding. At the simplest level, it's no surprise that singular, long-staying rarities might leap to the top of a most iconic list; the Spotted Towhee at Baldwin Harbor Park in Nassau County was listed as number one for that hotspot earlier today, but has since vanished, presumably via a tweak to the algorithm to stave off that particular sort of bias. Another bias that will not be solved involves the traditions that tend to evolve among birders, seeking particular species at particular places, as opposed to various less targeted but equally appropriate sites. To the extent that birders tune into the Iconic Birds feature, I would expect that this particular form of non-independent birder effort will become further exaggerated.
But perusing the Iconic Birds of some hotspots I know well revealed something much more peculiar, which I didn't expect all—a species achieving iconic status apparently in error, via chronic mis-identification and mis-reporting!
Boat-tailed Grackle is a common species in the saltmarshes along the south shore of Long Island, venturing into other nearby habitats in various different ways that are difficult to generalize, but definitely expected in a relatively narrow range of contexts and quite unusual, even rare or absent, outside of these. Thus, I know from experience that it is frequently present at all seasons at sites along the Ocean Parkway adjacent to the marshes fringing Great South Bay, but that it is scarce at best, and absent for much of the year, just across the Fire Island Inlet, at Robert Moses SP. My routine coverage of this area is perfectly clear in this regard (detections/checklist):
RMSP 33/1885 = 0.0175
Captree SP 122/422 = 0.30
Captree Island 85/224 = 0.38
Oak Beach 21/223 = 0.09
Cedar Beach 39/227 = 0.17
Gilgo Beach 84/332 = 0.25
It is possible, I suppose that the actual frequency of ca. 0.0175 is sufficiently greater than the frequency calculated across all of Suffolk County, or some other unreasonably large reference region, to qualify as "iconic," but I doubt that this is what's happening. Visiting and otherwise unwary birders definitely tend to report Boat-tailed Grackle (and several other species) in error at RMSP, either because of misidentification, or by imprecision (birders often reach RMSP via a series of stops where the species is common, enabling it to "leak" onto the RMSP checklists as well).
I'm curious about how others feel about the Iconic Birds of the areas they know well, and those of areas they don't know but might visit. More particularly, I'm curious about the spatial scale used to calculate regional occurrence.
