Here at the Birdstack labs (Ha! We wish we had a lab!), we’ve just finished up a shiny new feature. We’ve been working on it for awhile, so without further ado … (drumroll please!)

Maps showing everybody’s observations are now available on species pages. Let’s take a look at the Galah page for an example. (Galahs are stunning pink Australian cockatoos. They look like raspberry sherbet, mmmm.)

I’d like to point out several things in the example above. First and most obvious is the map peppered with markers. You can click on a marker to find out more about observations made at that location. Clicking the link (see where my mouse is hovering?) will take you to Mosura’s page for that particular observation.

You’ll also note, circled in red, the “My observations” link. This link appears when you are logged in to your Birdstack account, and as you’d expect, it reloads the map with only your observations displayed.

Then below the map, you can see the page numbers, also circled in red. To keep the maps from being too slow and unwieldy, 50 observations are loaded at at time. If you want to see more, click on those links to keep exploring!

Now, you may or may not have noticed that the whole World Bird List section of Birdstack is now searchable. There’s a box at the top of order, family, genus, and species pages. You can type English family names, species name fragments, binomials, etc. into that box, and we’ll show you whatever we can find. That should make it easy to start exploring the maps.

Finally, I should explain which observations show up on the maps and which ones don’t. Observations must meet the following criteria to be displayed on the public maps:

1. The observation is public, not private.
2. The location is public, not private.
3. The location has latitude and longitude coordinates.

Again, that’s for public maps. When you click the “My observations” link, you (and only you) should be able to see your private observations and your observations made at private locations.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go check out some maps! While you’re at it, you might see some big holes in distributions, or species that aren’t represented at all. We’re guessing that you have data that can help fill those gaps — maybe it’s still in a paper notebook, or maybe you just haven’t added latitude and longitude to your list of locations.

So remember, just like the little Dutch boy did with the dike, if you see a hole, plug it up! (OK, OK, one of my Dutch friends insists that the story is merely an American fable, but you now have the power to do what the little Dutch boy never did.)

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 9:14 am and is filed under new features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.