Date: 9/5/26 8:44 am From: Harry LeGrand (via carolinabirds Mailing List) <carolinabirds...> Subject: Re: County Maps
Nathan,
Thanks. I THINK we are on the right track ever since Ivara posted this to
the carolinabirds website on Sept. 1:
---------------------------------------------
After getting the wood-warblers done as an example, I updated the code so
it can run through everything, and they're all up on github
<https://github.com/IJBG/nc-ebird-maps/tree/main/maps> <https://github.com/IJBG/nc-ebird-maps/tree/main/maps>now. One note is that
the eBird data available on GBIF is through 2024, so for the most
up-to-date info I'm waiting for my request to access the latest full eBird
dataset to be approved.
I've got thoughts on how to keep the maps updated with new eBird data or
when someone submits a record on the website, implementation just depends
on what the backend of BNC looks like. Maybe Tom, Kent, Allen and I can
email to discuss and/or find a time to meet.
------------------------
In addition, three other things:
1. Kent was able to recover several maps files; he sent this just to Tom
and me, later on Sept. 1:
---------------------------------
Here is a dump of some files that I was able to recover. Is any of it
useful?
If this link IS still available - it was to me just now -- you can see the
original maps for I think ALL of the breeding species (180-200), but only
25-30% of the original green county maps. But, these old green maps we
HOPE are to be replaced by the ones that Ivara has produced -- assuming you
can see these on her link above.
2. A week ago, Tom Howard e-mailed me that he thinks he can get these new
eBird maps onto the species accounts, but I have not yet heard back yet to
check out or test any maps.
3. Several of us are planning to be on a Zoom call with Scott Anderson (NC
Wildlife) on Friday morning to discuss these maps, as the NC WRC is trying
to finalize the NC Bird Atlas maps -- breeding and wintering -- and hope
that the Birds of NC website maps will help them with this. We ALL want to
see "cleaned up" eBird breeding maps. When you check a map there, for
breeding season, you will run across a lot of black or dark purple blocks
for confirmed or probable breeding, and when you see the data, some say
"carrying food" or "juvenile or immature", when in fact many species are
seen flying with food (Accipiters, for example) out of season, and many
waders and other species have juvenile/immature birds that are seen miles
from where they were actually born.
So -- stay tuned here for updates on having both the county occurrence maps
AND the red-dot breeding county maps added to the BNC website. The maps are
there, they need to be added, and of course once added, the maps --
especially the green county maps -- need to NOT be static but easily
updated.
Harry LeGrand
author/editor, Birds of North Carolina website
On Sat, Sep 5, 2026 at 7:33 AM Nathan Tarr <carolinabirds...> wrote:
> Harry,
> Regarding your question about generating county maps from eBird data, I
> also have some resources that could help. However, Ivara’s maps look great
> and I can’t be of much help in the short term.
>
> I spent the last 4-5 years of my time with the NC Coop Unit and USGS
> National Gap Analysis Program (GAP) developing a process for attributing
> species to polygons. We needed to attribute all U.S. birds, mammals, and
> herps to 12-digit HUCs by integrating expert opinion and observations with
> existing maps, hopefully capturing range shifts over time. We were working
> nationally, but I developed a process that could be adapted and applied to
> any boundary polygons (i.e., counties) and spatial extent.
>
> Details are in this preprint:
> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.653500v1. The case
> study is for the Fisher, but I have generated maps of birds in the past as
> well.
> I was set to publish that paper in the Journal of Fisheries and Wildlife
> Management and then revise all the GAP range maps under our new framework,
> but then Trump was elected, the program fell apart, and the journal told me
> they were no longer allowed to publish anything (they were affiliated with
> the FWS).
>
> The framework depends on software (really just a repository of code) that
> I built for curating occurrence records from GBIF and eBird that was
> published by the USGS: https://biss.pensoft.net/article/93823/. It
> probably needs to be updated at this point as no one has been maintaining
> it. Also, the size of the EBD had become a barrier to use nationally, even
> with eBird's auk package.
>
> We (GAP) encountered many issues over the years while trying to
> incorporate and integrate occurrence records, expert opinion, predictive
> models, and historical maps and the framework we were about to adopt
> provided a way to deal with them. I would be happy to talk more about this,
> answer questions etc. if you are interested. I have been slowly working
> on applying the process for some personal projects in my free time (I’m
> doing public health data management at UNC now), but I’d be interested in
> helping with the BNC and Biodiversity Atlas if you want.
>
> Thanks for all your amazing work on the BNC website and everything else
> you contribute to conservation in NC!
>
> Nathan M. Tarr
>
> https://nmtarr.wordpress.ncsu.edu/ >
>
>
