BirdTrax Update: What's Happening to the Checklist Tab?

eBird now offers an elegant interface for perusing recent checklists submitted in any county or state. If you haven't already, bookmark eBird's Region Explorer. It provides you with fast and easy access to a wealth of information.

BirdTrax requests information from eBird databases every time you load your gadget. An ever-growing community of BirdTrax users worldwide is beginning to make data requests overwhelming, thus it's time to direct your checklists tabs directly to eBird.

Important Note: If your gadget opens up in the checklist tab by default, you need to change that. If you are operating a personal gadget on Google Sites, for example, open up the preferences tab and change the default view setting. If you have embedded BirdTrax on your website, go back to the BirdTrax embed code generator and enter all the same information as before (only checklists is no longer an option for default view).

We appreciate your understanding and are grateful together with team eBird for your support and use of this wonderful dataset. We hope that you continue to enjoy the wide variety of data exploration tools available. More are on the way!! Just after New Years we'll put up a teaser here on the website for a new tool on track for release before Spring migration.

Find those eBird Personal Locations that should be merged with Hotspots!!

eBird should totally, totally develop a tool that allows users to detect whether their personal locations are very near hotspots (or should be merged with the hotspot). Maybe they are working on that, but in the meantime here's a little app to help you clean up your locations and get your name on more Hotspot Explorer pages :)

Hotspot Alignment Tool
To use this program, download your eBird data (the link is in the My eBird page on the right toolbar), then upload that file directly to the page.

This is just a primitive idea of what a tool like this really ought to do, but I just wanted to share this little functionality with the eBirders out there in case it can be useful.

Added Language Support for BirdTrax

Species names in BirdTrax can now be viewed in French and Spanish in addition to English! This was in high demand for a long time, so I anticipate much excitement. I hope this new possibility will provide impetus for further growth in eBird participation worldwide. When embedding BirdTrax, simply select from a choice of languages (option beneath country drop-down box). If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at support@birdventurebirding.com.
The new "Espanol (MX)" eBird Gadget!

Embed a BirdTrax Gadget on your website by clicking here or add it to your Google Site.

On a side note, I could use some help translating the basic text of BirdTrax into Spanish. I have received French and Portuguese assistance, but would greatly appreciate an email with the translations of non-species text used in the gadget from users who are fluent/comfortable in Spanish. I will keep this request updated once I obtain the information I need to proceed.