eB I would like very much to re-iterate the remarks made by Bill Whan. eBird has its uses, but a historical compendium of the birds of Ohio is not one of them, nor do I see it serving as such any time in the future. I further strongly urge that any birder truly interested in understanding the abundance and distribution of the birds of Ohio have a working knowledge of Bruce Peterjohn's Birds of Ohio. As I write this, I have both 1st and 2nd editions within arm's length. You should too. I also hope that every Ohio birder has handy, ideally in the car on any given trip, McCormac and Kennedy's Birds of Ohio. A bit more illustrative to the points of seasonality and range within Ohio, it is also a little more up to date than Bruce's work. If you have a record flagged by eBird, there is an excellent chance that looking it up within Jim's book will find it out of the typical range and/or season illustrated therein. As to the utility of the eBird database, wholesale adoption of eBird by Ohio birders can be traced back only to 2007. There is a reasonably good representation of the status of birds across the state from that point on. Slowly, painfully, we are adding vetted historical data. 1. 90% of that presently in the system prior to 1970 is sourced from well known published material. 2. ... and those sources are fully cited with each eBird entry. In the future, I hope bringing up such a record permits access to the literature citation if not the published source itself. There is a sense on my part, (based on vetting 130,000 records) that back to around 1996-97 there is sufficient data to reconstruct a fair representation of the seasonality of the more common species. see ...http://tinyurl.com/y2o8jfa But that's as far as it goes. Again, if I may drive home the point, eBird is simply a tool, one that augments/enhances our existing collection and archive of bird observations ... how well or poorly it performs is up to those who use it. cheers Vic Fazio Horse Hollow Wind Farm, Buffalo Gap, TX ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]