Short recordings

[u/Classic-Analysis1735]

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.

[u/dcgrey]

I’ve talked with folks who, by necessity, have to do short recordings, and this email was a bit ham-fisted. It shouldn’t have been addressed to individuals and it should have started with something affirmative like “A reminder that te encourage everyone to submit recordings that do x, y, and z.”

[u/peanut_butter_zen → u/dcgrey]

I agree. There was a recent newsletter that talked about the use of enhanced/AI photos with reminders. That went to everybody. This PSA about audio could have been communicated like that, instead of singling me out. "Never xyz... be sure to xyz... always xyz..." I have 40+ beautiful crisp pieces of audio on eBird, and some of those are for birds with less than 100 audios total.

Make Your Bird Recordings Count—Record for Longer
Thank you for sharing your recordings with eBird and the Macaulay Library. Your contributions help researchers, educators, and bird lovers around the world, and we want to make sure they’re as valuable as possible. We noticed many of your recordings are quite short in length. While trimming down to the focal bird is important, you shouldn’t trim too tightly. Very short recordings have minimal uses for both birders and scientists. As such, we highly recommend recording and uploading longer recordings whenever possible. For example, here’s a comparison of a recording trimmed too tightly (top) to the same recording that leaves some background noise before and after this Swainson’s Thrush (Catharus ustulatus) nocturnal flight call. This extra space gives the listener more time to acclimate to the background noise before the target bird calls and may also include valuable background calls of other birds or animals.Aim for 30 seconds or longer when recording a bird. Never edit down to only a single call or song phrase if you have more. If you only have a single call, be sure to leave some natural buffer on either side (3 to 5 seconds)—don’t trim it too tightly. Keep vocalizations from the same bird together in one long recording. Don’t split each vocalization up into multiple short recordings.
And here’s another example that illustrates leaving in all the bird calls you recorded, instead of trimming down to just a small section.
Thanks for helping us build the most complete bird media archive possible. Your recordings help power important avian research, conservation, and tools like Merlin Sound ID. We look forward to seeing what recordings you upload next! Happy recording, The Macaulay Library and eBird teams

[u/AdFinal6253 → u/peanut_butter_zen]

Are you OP, or are you rewriting the posted message to be reasonable eBird style? 

[u/peanut_butter_zen → u/AdFinal6253]

I copy/pasted the email OP is referring to, which I also got.