How Can I Share My Bird Photos With the Cornell Lab?

We’re continuously thankful that human beings percentage so many fantastic snap shots with us. If you’ve taken a few snap shots and need other hen enthusiasts to see them, there are several methods to percentage them with us:

If you use eBird, you could upload photographs and sound in your checklists to verify exquisite birds or simply to show off a picture or chook you’re in particular pleased with.

Note that pics can simplest be shared on eBird if they may be connected to a tick list, this means that they have to be taken at the same time and within the same location because the checklist. This media is then viewable by using other eBird users via our eBird/Macaulay Library media search function.

By uploading photos to eBird checklists, users agree to make them to be had to the Cornell Lab for use in various initiatives like illustrating species debts on All About Birds, Birds of the World, and eBird.

How Can I Share My Bird Photos With the Cornell Lab?

eBird checklists and pictures also strength the Cornell Lab’s Merlin Bird ID app which can identify over 10,000 species thanks to individuals of the public who post checklists. Photos train Merlin Photo ID, which is a part of the Merlin Bird ID app—meaning your image may additionally help millions of people round the world discover birds!

Ways to Share Photos Through Other Cornell Lab Projects

Cornell Lab initiatives additionally run photo-related contests and demanding situations. Project FeederWatch often holds their Bird Spotter image contest at some point of the wintry weather. The Great Backyard Bird Count also has photograph sharing as a part of their weekend occasion in February.

Have Questions About A Photo, like “What Bird is This?”

What if you’ve got a query approximately a photo but you don’t need to percentage it with others? You can continually ship images for ID and other inquiries to the Cornell Lab. We’ll do our first-class to reply—and we received’t proportion your photo with out your permission.

An even easier manner to discover a hen in a image is to download the Merlin Bird ID app and use the app’s Photo ID tool. This device can identify greater than 8,000 species by using analyzing an uploaded image. It’s smooth to apply—open the app for your cellphone, upload your image to the app, and presto! It will help perceive the chicken to your picture with out sharing it with others.

The Macaulay Library and eBird assist you to upload pictures (and audio) immediately for your eBird checklists, thereby archiving them within the Macaulay Library.

When you add these pix to aid your information, it now not only offers our regional reviewers with great statistics to evaluate your observations of rare and uncommon species, it also offers different birders an illustrated tick list of the birds you discovered, making for a extra exciting and informative revel in while surfing eBird.

Who doesn’t like seeing extra photographs of birds? Uploaded media presents treasured facts for projects like MerlinVision, our laptop imaginative and prescient challenge which allows birders become aware of the birds they’ve photographed and will play a massive function in destiny records best tasks.

Additionally, your media turns into part of a digital catalog of the birds of the arena on the Macaulay Library. User pictures also help other Cornell Lab academic tasks to illustrate species accounts, inclusive of the Merlin Bird ID app, Birds of the World, and All About Birds.

Which Images Need to I Upload?

Photos uploaded to eBird and the Macaulay Library are used for a wide type of purposes, so a wide style of images are useful and need to be uploaded. Good, high-decision photographs of both uncommon and commonplace birds are particularly valuable, as they are able to assist illustrate species in Cornell Lab tasks, as well as providing an fun browsing revel in for users exploring the archive.

However, lower-great pictures can also be useful—they help train our laptop vision model to go back accurate identifications no matter image high-quality. For the functions of documenting uncommon species, any identifiable photos help support your identifications and allow eBird nearby reviewers to assess observations more effectively and appropriately.

Photos illustrating behavior, in addition to exceptional molts, plumages, and angles, are also of particular hobby for documenting the spectrum of world bird range. So to summarize: nearly any identifiable photograph is honest recreation to add, whether it is a documentation shot of a first country record, a properly lit photograph of a not unusual yard chicken, or an extraordinary photograph of a difficult-to-see species.

Resolution, Length, Cropping, and Enhancing

If possible, add photos at their unique resolution. EBird accepts photos up to twenty MB in size in JPEG and PNG formats. High-resolution images are crucial because those photographs are part of a permanent clinical archive and can be used for computer imaginative and prescient getting to know.

Although pix are displayed in checklists and search at a smaller length, the total-resolution file is saved inside the archive. High decision photos are also essential for your pix to be considered to be used in initiatives like eBird Explore Species, Merlin, and Birds of the World.

Crop pics so that the hen is massive and visible in the frame. However, make certain to go away masses of "canvas" round the edge of the chook. More cropping can always be carried out later, but there’s no way to get extra information again. When cropping, it's frequently exact to preserve extra room in the front of the fowl than behind it to offer the photo a more balanced experience.

When modifying, aim to make the hen look because it did inside the field; please keep away from over-saturation, over-sprucing, or augmentation of the photo beyond what you discovered. The concept is to create a natural replica of ways the chook seemed in lifestyles.

Many editing gear found in Photoshop can "enhance" an otherwise backlit or hard-to-see picture, but they can also result in very bizarre-looking birds; please use these tools sparingly. Similarly, avoid beauty Photoshopping like the removal of branches or different predominant changes. These artificially created images are not suitable for inclusion in a scientific collection.

AI Enhancement Coverage

Our primary commitment is to keep accurate and proper facts in the Macaulay Library archive and eBird database. We recognize the rising function of synthetic intelligence gear in improving photo nice. Acceptable AI upgrades encompass minor modifications including minor polishing and moderate de-noising, which may make a contribution to a refined presentation of the original photograph.

However, lots of those equal softwares, while settings are too high or the unique pics are too poor, will create unnatural and over-edited variations of the equal photos. We anticipate members to refrain from adjustments that considerably alter the appearance of herbal subjects beyond what became at the beginning captured—this is, any adjustments making birds seem unique than they did in existence.

At the acute, this consists of using AI to generate new photos. AI-generated images may be considered a form of art, but aren't acceptable documentation of a species, and as such isn't suitable to add to the Macaulay Library and eBird. Doing so might also result in being blocked from the platform.

There is a grey quarter between ideal and unacceptable improvements. If you're uncertain approximately precise instances or require clarification, we inspire you to attain out for steering, but always attempt to contribute the least edited, maximum herbal model of an photo. If over-edited pix are being uploaded, we may also attain out to invite you to reduce the amount of enhancement on destiny uploads.

Multiple Pics of the Same Species

We inspire you to add multiple snap shots that display exclusive individuals, components, angles, or behaviors of the species in addition to pictures illustrating unique people seen even as you are out birding. However, multiple pix should illustrate variations and now not be nearly identical frames from the equal burst of pictures.

In the checklist view, photographs will sort within the order in which they initialize and start uploading. If multiple snap shots are decided on or dropped in at one time, they will start importing in a one of a kind order depending at the file size. If the order of photos to your tick list is vital to you, ensure that they end importing before including greater.

Watermarks and Different Textual Content

Please refrain from adding any type of text or watermark to your snap shots. As the photographer, your name will constantly be displayed next to the image. Watermarks and different textual content mar the aesthetics of the picture, as well as make it more difficult for pc learning projects which include MerlinVision to apply the pics.

Although not encouraged, if you want to add a watermark, please maintain the watermark small and subtle. Additional text on the pix consisting of the species name, date, or region is not sensible due to the fact that records always appears with the photo.

Similarly, if your digicam puts a time and date stamp onto the image mechanically, consider disabling this feature. The time and date are already saved within the metadata of the picture and do no longer want to be displayed at the photo itself. We additionally ask which you refrain from including any form of border across the photo.

Composite images

Please chorus from uploading composite images (photographs that include multiple photo). Each photo must be uploaded separately.

Back-Of-Camera Pix

When you’ve photographed a unprecedented chicken, it can be tempting to take a shot of your digicam’s LCD screen and add it to your eBird listing for brief documentation purposes.

While this will be a reasonable approach of having the phrase out in a rush, please bear in mind to head returned and update the placeholder photographs. Back-of-camera photos may not be excessive sufficient resolution to expose essential details, lack crucial metadata along with date and time, and aren't useful for tasks like Merlin Vision.

Non-chicken Photos

Because every image you add has its very own stand-by myself statistics report in the Macaulay Library, it's miles important that any image uploaded to a particular species sincerely carries that species. Exceptions are pics of habitat or nests, which can be uploaded and tagged with the "Habitat" or "Nest" tag, respectively.

At this time we ask you to refrain from importing snap shots of scenery, maps, screenshots of spectrograms or contrast pix, snap shots of your birding companions, and many others. For your eBird checklist. Similarly, images of animals other than birds need to not be uploaded to eBird. Field notes that don't include sketches should be transcribed into the commentary info as opposed to uploaded as photos.

Rating Photographs

After you upload your picture, charge the fine of the picture (1–5 stars). For guidelines on the way to fee photographs, see our photo high-quality rating page. You can rate the pix you add, and that they can also be rated by using everybody signed into eBird via our network-primarily based rating device.

Adding Notes

The comments about a species or commentary on a tick list (observation details) are one-of-a-kind than the media notes added to a picture. Media notes check with that unique photograph, whereas the statement info discuss with that entire commentary,.

That's regularly no longer just the hen that you photographed. This is a diffused but important difference. The media notes are connected to the photograph, the commentary information attached to the observation.