eBird Danger

Now this is interesting: a male Costa’s Hummingbird has been in attendance on a feeder here in Vancouver for the past couple of days, where it has been seen by a few birders and handsomely photographed by at least one.

One of the observers did her or his duty and submitted the record to eBird, where it promptly showed up in my “needs alert” for British Columbia…

…complete with the physical address of the feeder.

The owner of that feeder fears, rightly so, a deluge of photographers, and was, rightly so, unhappy to find his or her address on line with the exciting news.

The lesson, from an article published at eBird some months ago: “Delay reporting observations for a week to keep these reports off the ‘eBird Notable Birds feed’. This way news of a rarity will not show up on everyone’s desktop and cause birders to come to your friends’ yard!”

I’d been toying with the idea of asking if I could come see the bird, but now I think I’ll wait a few days and enjoy our own Costa’s at our own feeders in Tucson.