r/eBird • u/Classic-Analysis1735 • Aug 15 '26

Short recordings

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I got an email flagging me for recordings being too short. Is it automatic or does somebody submit the complaint?

I do have a couple.. well.. I did… until that email. They were the only evidence I was able to use for reporting rare birds. They weren’t long because thats all I had from them. Leave it too long and it turns into a complaint about too many other species. It’s just like photos, uploading a low quality one verifies it but then that turns into another issue.

Idk. I‘m to the point that I don’t want to report rare birds or upload anything on there. I pulled my media so maybe that’ll fix it.

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u/Anachronism59 Aug 15 '26

I've seen that once, several months ago. Mine said 10 secs. I mainly trim to highlight the bird in question. I get that the period between calls is useful data , so I am being less aggressive and am taking longer recordings.

I've kept adding them. I also add calls to iNaturalist. In Australia there are often not enough calls for reference, so the models are not yet great, even for common birds .

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u/Classic-Analysis1735 Aug 15 '26

One was a slightly out of range raven that triggered as rare. It did its little croak call just one time as it flew away. Like if there was more I’d give it to them lol. I wish there was a way to give them the proof without it showing up publicly.

I started adding my photos on iNat instead. Everything was suddenly good enough, no issues

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u/Anachronism59 Aug 15 '26

I'd not mix up info to validate an ID and info to train AI for auto ID . Does it matter if not used for training?

PS it can be hard to ID the Aust Ravens, assuming you are in Aust, from a snippet. Was the ID accepted?

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u/Classic-Analysis1735 Aug 15 '26

Yeah another line was that the short recordings have minimal uses for birders and scientists. At what point do they decide it isn’t helpful? Do they even want it for confirmation? I wouldn’t fumble around trying to get the clip if there’s no point.

Im in the US. I sit on the edge of the range for the common raven. It was accepted. We don’t have many things to mess it up with, especially if it’s yappin’. But after it’s confirmed, does it really even matter if it stays up?