1. From 2009 to 2017 By Alison Nevins
Map of My Birding Data
Western Bluebird
From 2009 to 2017
By Alison Nevins

2. Western Screech-Owl named Gus
Map Idea
Western Screech-Owl named Gus
I am a wildlife biologist and over the past several years I have worked in many different states with birds.
Throughout that time I used a website called eBird to log the species and number of birds seen.
I wanted to create a map that showed the places that I have been in the continental United States with the number of species that I have seen.

3. Data
Painted Bunting
Added an excel sheet with eBird data—displayed XY data and exported data to create point layer
Added US county and State map from online
Adding online data
Display XY Data

4. Tools Select by Location– to select only the counties with eBird data
Grasshopper Sparrow
Tools
Select by Location– to select only the counties with eBird data
Dissolve– to create a layer of summarized eBird data
Join– to join the eBird data layer with the County and State layers
Join by Location
Select by Location
Dissolve

5. Other Steps Adding data field Attribute Table
Red-Shouldered Hawk chick
Attribute Table
adding count data to Marin County
turning off data fields and adding data fields
Symbology tab– to create a map with gradient colors for number of species
Exporting data
From excel sheet
From selection
Adding a Legend
Exporting selected data
Symbology Tab
Adding and editing a Legend

6. Problems/Solutions Solutions Problems
Yellow-billed Cuckoo
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Problems
Solutions
Not matching projected coordinate system between eBird data and map data
Select by Attributes– mistake in equation
Marin County not selected
eBird data had multiple lines for same species—led to an inflated count
Re-added data with same projected coordinate system
Used Select by Location
Selected individually and joined with eBird_counties layer and had to edit layer to add count of species
Used the Dissolve tool to summarize attributes and checked total against website numbers

7. What I learned
Ovenbird
I learned how to use the Dissolve tool which helped me to summarize my data so that I could get the result that I wanted
I learned how to Join datasets to create a layer with all the data that I needed
I learned to use the Intersect tool even though I ended up not using the intersect layer in my final map.
I learned to use Select by Location when I have multiple points or polygons that I need to select.

8. Final Map
All pictures belong to Alison Nevins