Is there any way to get all sightings of a specific species at a given location, via the existing APIs? (It appears every API only provides the most recent sighting.)

Ok, thanks. Guess I'll need to build a sightings front-end and export/import my stuff into eBird.

Interesting, since BirdsEye (iphone app) claims to show bird sightings within the last 3 years, using this API.

You can add this to your API want list, if it is not already there:  I would like to be able to retrieve a list of all taxa at a locale (e.g., country or a state/province/political-unit-within-a-country) which ARE (one option) or ARE NOT (second option) on one of my lists (e.g, my World List or my US list).  Thanks for considering this.  Peter Bono (pbono@prba.com)

When you roll out new API calls (web service calls), do you roll them out one at a time (as you finish them) or do you roll them out in batches?  For example, Jeff mentions that you are working on a "checklist" API call.  Will that be available as soon as it is coded and tested internally, or will you wait until you decide to publish eBird-1.2?

Do you need "beta testers" for individual API calls or are we all "beta testers" all the time?

Thanks, Peter

What is the status of the checklist API? Is this a read only API or read/write?

Any chance of getting a JSONP API in place? It's a drag having to proxy every API request.

Also, would be great to get a general update on what's going on with the API. Thanks!

Is there an easy way to see how many checklists a hotspot has? As a hotspot editor I can go in and look one by one, but there are 900+ in my state, and I was looking for something more efficient, like a csv file I could just download.

As for why, well, I'm just curious - what are the most birded spots in my state? But also I occasionally have to merge them, or ask to have them reverted to personal spots, and it would be helpful information.

thanks!

Andrew Core

AZ

I believe there is a bug in "recent nearby observations" (ws1.1/data/obs/geo/recent) and "recent observations at hotspots" (ws1.1/data/obs/hotspot/recent).

This is easiest to see with hotspots. When I ask for recent sightings (detail=full) at a hotspot that has more than one checklist for the time period, the first checklist that comes back is complete. However, the following checklists all appear incomplete. I check this using the sub-id to look at the checklist on ebird.org.

This is harder to check with nearby observations because that api does not support detail=full. However, if you use nearby observations on a hotspot location you can see the same checklists in both results. The behavior is similar for each - checklists after the first one are incomplete.

My application is here: http://birdingwashington.info/dashboard/

You can see the behavior: 1) select a state, 2) choose "hotspots", 3) click on a hotspot, 4) if there are multiple checklists click on the "eBird chklst" buttons to see the checklists at ebird.org. At the very bottom of the page, the line under the map, you can see the api url I am using.

Let me know if you can't replicate this or if I am misunderstanding how the api works.

Thanks,

Randy Robinson

Seattle, WA

One useful API to have is to return the date the species list was last changed. That way, apps can see if their local copy of species list is up to date without having to download the whole list. Otherwise the options are to either manually update your app / webpage when the species list changes or to periodically download the entire list, parse the XML and update the list eventhough the list will change only once a year.

This query returns Barnacle Goose on 12/28/12 (yesterday): 

http://ebird.org/ws1.1/data/notable/geo/recent?lng=-73.89&lat=40.89&dist=2&back=5&maxResults=500&detail=simple&locale=en_US&fmt=xml

However, this query does not return Barnacle Goose (5 days back): 

http://ebird.org/ws1.1/data/obs/geo_spp/recent?lng=-73.89&lat=40.89&sci=branta%20leucopsis&dist=20&back=5&maxResults=500&locale=en_US&fmt=xml

This query returns Barnacle Goose on 12/05/12: 

http://ebird.org/ws1.1/data/obs/geo_spp/recent?lng=-73.89&lat=40.89&sci=branta%20leucopsis&dist=20&back=30&maxResults=500&locale=en_US&fmt=xml

Any idea why the most recent sitings for Barnacle Goose at 40.89311,-73.89412 are filtered from results? 

A query for Canada Goose at 40.89311,-73.89412 will return many recent checklists that also include Barnacle Goose, however a specific query for Barnacle Goose will not yield the most recent sightings.

What's the status of the subnational2 lookup?

https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/CLOISAPI/AKN-1.0-Subnational2

Will this be available soon?

Thanks,
Tom Auer

Is the checklist API available now, or if not when might it become available? Jeff mentioned in his post of April 27, 2011 that it might be coming soon, but I haven't been able to find documentation for it.

Thanks,

    Harold Mills

I had been "wget"ing or "cURL"ing my way into the API to grab the XML then parse it to make appropriate KML files out of it for display in Google Maps and Google Earth.  At some point it has become "Forbidden" for me to access the API URLs via that method.  Any word on how to fix this problem.  I can get to the URLs via a browser window without a problem, but it causes problems when I try any of the API calls I was making via a wget or curl. 

Bryan

Is there anyway to get my submissions, using the api?

What's the status on a submission API? I'm out every day, currently using Notes on my iPhone to record banding codes, but I know I could do much better in designing my own app (I'm an app developer). I've tried BirdLog but it's terribly impractical for in-the-field recording (takes forever to record anything, Notes is much better). The problem, of course, is that finding the time to turn my notes into checklists is tough so I end up having to spend an hour or two doing this manually (so monotonous!) every couple weeks, and if I could do it in the field I'd probably be more open to reporting incidentals more often, and maybe encourage others to do the same.

Howdy all, I just released the following website, intended for public usage:
http://birdsearch.org

It makes use of the following API calls:

• ref/hotspot/geo
• data/obs/loc/recent
• data/notable/geo/recent

There's OODLES more functionality I'd like to add, so I'll keep watching these pages for any improvements to the API.... :)

Oh, and the code is all open source and found on github here: https://github.com/benkeen/birdsearch.org

If anyone wants to reach me, feel free to email at ben.keen@gmail.com.

Enjoy!

- Ben

Hi All,

We are releasing a bird sighting and journal platform for south Africa. Does anyone know when we can get an API that allows us to pull in species photos, bird sounds and bird information?

Appreciate any help on this.

Jean

Recent notable sightings in a region seems to have become flaky in the last couple of days. When "detail=full" is specified, sometimes only the simple field results are returned. For example:

http://ebird.org/ws1.1/data/notable/region/recent?rtype=subnational1&r=US-AZ&detail=full&fmt=xml&back=14

returned the following:

<response><header><locale country="US" language="en"/><timestamp>2014-01-24T20:34:01.480-05:00</timestamp><criteria><fmt>xml</fmt><hotspot>false</hotspot><rtype>subnational1</rtype><r>US-AZ</r><back>14</back><max-results>10000</max-results><detail>full</detail></criteria></header>

<result>

<sighting><loc-id>L1075433</loc-id><location-private>true</location-private><obs-dt>2014-01-24 16:45</obs-dt><obs-reviewed>false</obs-reviewed><obs-valid>false</obs-valid><loc-name>Salero Ranch Unit 1 Lot 10 yard</loc-name><how-many>1</how-many><lat>31.6094605</lat><lng>-110.9072828</lng><com-name>Costa's Hummingbird</com-name><sci-name>Calypte costae</sci-name></sighting>

This is followed by the rest of the sightings, all of which have only the simple field results.

At other times, the same request will return full field results.

Am I missing something or is there a problem with the returned results?

The app where this occurs is here: http://birdingwashington.info/dashboard/

Thanks,

Randy Robinson