I usually upload all my birding checklists to eBird and upload all the other nature obs. on iNat, so for the birders out there, both or only one of them?
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When Iâm birding, Iâm primarily putting my list into eBird - frankly I think my data is more valuable on that platform since it uses a complete checklist system rather than individual sightings. Any photos I take go onto iNat as observations, however.
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Check https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/inaturalist-vs-ebird/21150
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/birders-inaturalist-and-ebird/3024
I personally donât see any reason to spend time on two platforms.
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hmm, thanks!
Gave eBird a try once or twice, didnât like it. I think starting with iNat first spoiled me though in that regard.
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lol, I started with eBird so Iâm a bit loyal to it 
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Youâre welcome, I started with eBird and it felt much easier to not have the burden of counting thousands of mallards or each flock that flies by, if you only focus on birds and donât mind having to do the extra work, upload to eBird, but if youâre ok with not making hundreds of blank observations and just photograph/audio record, iNat is better.
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I agree with @fffffffff . I used to Ebird frequently, with my naturalizing focused almost entirely on birds. Now Iâm focusing on birds, fungi, insects, seaweedsâŚso in that respect Inaturalist is a much better fit. That said, when I do go out specifically with the intent on birding and make a complete list, I always submit it to Ebird, appreciating the scientific and conservation information it might provide. Afterwards, I add any photos I took to both the Ebird checklist and as Inat observations, linking the two. For example:
https://ebird.org/checklist/S99149632
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/103393616
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eBird checklists always, and I usually upload photos to iNaturalist and will then finally add photos to my eBird lists after the fact.
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Same for me. Went out today and photographed a bunch of trees (that will go on iNat) but didnât see any birds. Recorded the three American crows and one red-tailed hawk that I heard on eBird.
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I lack the patience and interest in recording things on too many platforms. Although I like documenting birds, Iâm photoâing other organisms as well so iNat is the best fit for me.
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eBird, eBird, eBird. I do put some birds up on here, especially if I am looking for help on narrowing ID down. eBird is much more useful for me when it comes to lists and targetting times/places for going birding.
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When I go birding, I use other platforms to upload the list. as I feel pretty confident with my identification and I do not want to take a picture for all the species. If I do take some bird pictures, I still put them on iNat.
I think if you feel confident, you should upload your bird sightings to ebird or similar, if possible in a list format with absence/presence. This way you are contributing most to conservation/science. If you have just a casual day and snap a picture or two, I would put it on iNat.
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I had tinkered with eBird in the past and worked a fair amount to collect observations for iNaturalist. I am now working to add historical observations to eBird where I donât record effort or how many of each species I see. I am using my iNaturalist observations to add to my history. Any need for further information on rare sightings I will cross reference to my iNaturalist observation.
The reason for this new effort with eBird is to help with my iNaturalist observations. I just finished a journey across Canada with the primary purposes to see and experience the different ecozones, visit relatives new and old, and add birds and bees to my life lists. I find that the eBird app is very helpful at finding target species of bird lifers that have been seen within 1/2/4/10/30km in the last 1/3/7/14/30 days at a current/selected location. By adding to my checklists, I can narrow down my targets to whole world lifers.
I had a few âbig daysâ on this journey and whereas I canât photograph or audio record everything I am aware of, I can keep track of it all, either by estimated/actual numbers or by presence. I feel that putting myself (with the incredible observational support of my wife) through these âbig daysâ, I build my planning skills for when I can go out and focus on particular species to observe. I find these planning skills help me for when I am planning on observing other species of interest to me - mammals, bees, wasps, and marine invertebrates.
If I am working on an actual bird count then the camera has to take second place so that we can know actual numbers. A confirmation photo helps with rare sightings or hard to define birds. Much of the count relies on audio, especially in forests.
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I upload birds to iNaturalist, as Iike to have all my observations in one app. However, when I want a bird list for a place, I download it from eBird, as it consistently has a much more complete list. For most places, there are no bird species recorded on iNat that are not on eBird, but many on eBird that are not on iNat.
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Iâd say both! If you can/are willing. I have been on iNat since 2018 and eBird since 2019, but have loved birding passively for my entire life. In the past, eBird was somewhat of a burden (no pun intended) for me because everyday, no matter where I go, I passively hear and see birds. It was simply too much for me. I uploaded no more than 10 complete checklists in my first two years on eBird, despite birding nearly every day. I got into photography and began uploading individual bird sightings to iNat, along with other curious biological encounters. But especially for uncommon bird encounters because the pictures were valuable, and I didnât have to submit completed, lengthy checklists. In short, as a lifelong birder, I valued iNat more than eBird for a while.
Thanks to taking courses in a university setting, Iâve been exposed to both applications in a separate context. A Plant systematics course forced me to use iNat regularly for assignments, emphasizing the immense power of the community sourced data for plant populations. The Bird systematics course I am taking right now has fully contextualized eBird for me and helped me realize how much potential I have for point counts, recording vagrant species, and simply reforming my birding experience.
Lastly, I attended an incredible seminar a few days ago given by graduate student Benjamin Freeman at UBC. He studied montane forest birds in SW Peru where the so-called âescalator to extinctionâ (driven by global climate change) is already in action. Bird data was severely lacking from decades prior to his research and they actually leveraged massive amounts of eBird data from other tropical mountain ranges around the world to infer patterns about mountaintop birds on a global scale. This robust use of eBird data in such a valuable scientific study has totally inspired me to use my birding skills to contribute more checklists. He also pitched his Mountain Bird Network project to improve mountaintop bird counts.
I believe that if youâre willing to use both, you should! Both apps are immensely useful for exploring, learning, and each have their own advantages. I still upload plenty of birds to iNat, but mostly incidental encounters and especially FEATHERS!!! Uploading feathers to iNat is always a good thing to do. I try not to double upload my bird observations, but keep the incidental/feather obs. for iNat, and the large scale, bird count data for eBird. Thatâs just how I like to do it. I totally understand being overwhelmed by using multiple apps, though. Iâm just thankful that we have such a large community on both of those platforms. Super glad somebody asked this question!
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Yeah, I will make a full eBird checklist and submit all photos to iNat and add them to eBird checklist
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I am a huge fan of ebird! As others have said, I keep ebird checklists and add any bird photos I take to iNat as well.
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For checklists, eBird is the only way - you cannot be expected to photograph every bird you see, so if you want to keep accurate checklists, eBird is the only option.
But in terms of individual observation data, I think both are super useful.
Coming at this from the perspective of producing useful scientific data, eBird is a must, the counts and the sampling effort protocols allow researchers to do SO much more analysis with your sightings than with iNaturalist. I know most birders often donât upload birds to iNaturalist too because they worry about duplicate records. But imo iNaturalist has one big benefit to eBird, that of its spatial resolution, assuming youâre accurately recording the location of your sightings, iNaturalist can pinpoint where the bird was to within 10m or so, which is massively useful for fine-grain modeling, even if it is presence-only data.
So my recommendation (and what I do) is use both, eBird FOR SURE to upload full lists of species and to track sightings without needing to worry about photographing everything. An observation on eBird is far more likely to be used in research and analysis than one on iNat alone (there are also some data quality issues with iNaturalist which make analysis with iNat data more tricky, but thatâs another topic lmao). But birds on iNaturalist can provide for finer-grained analysis. (Though nothing wrong with using iNat only for observations of non-bird species, like a lot of birders do).
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Both for sure. I submit at least a quick eBird checklist daily but Iâm making sure that anything I can photo or get a recording of goes into iNaturalist. I like looking back at the iNat calendar to see a daily list and looking at the map to kind of journal what Iâve seen and where Iâve gone.
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