Date: 8/6/25 6:19 pm From: Tom Edell via groups.io <TEdell...> Subject: Re: [slocobirding] White-throated Sparrow timing in North County?
You cannot access individual records through the line graphs, only through the first link in my email: eBird SLO County Bar Chart <https://ebird.org/barchart?byr=1900&eyr=2025&bmo=1&emo=12&r=US-CA-079> . Once you are on that page, click on the map symbol to the left of the bar chart for any species to look at the records. You can change the date range to get a specific month or year. Here is what the data look like for White-throated Sparrow for all years, October only: eBird White-throated Sparrow Records for October <https://ebird.org/map/whtspa?bmo=10&emo=10&byr=1900&eyr=2025&<env.minX...>&<env.minY...>&<env.maxX...>&<env.maxY...>&gp=true> . BTW, the large markers are hotspots, the small markers are personal locations. Should you change the search parameters (species or time of year), red markers are for records in the last 30 days.
Tom Edell
Cayucos, CA
From: Ben Kolstad <ben...>
Sent: Wednesday, August 6, 2025 4:34 PM
To: Tom Edell <tedell...>
Cc: <slocobirding...>
Subject: Re: [slocobirding] White-throated Sparrow timing in North County?
Thanks for the screenshot, Tom; very helpful.
I’ve discovered how to replicate the data view you’ve got, but I’m stumped on how to click on the individual markers; nothing seems to be clickable for me. I can’t see how to select just the month of October in the bar chart data. That would be the really useful trick.
I can mouse over any individual week on the line graphs and see the numbers (I’ve screenshotted the April 8 week randomly), and I can mouse over each month on the histogram above it, but the data aren’t clickable. Am I missing something obvious?
The eBird SLO County bar chart <x-msg://4/eBird%20SLO%20County%20bar%20chart> is a good way to drill down into the data. You can select records by month and year and then look at individual records by clicking on the individual records/location. Aside from KJZ’s bird that was present June-Sep, there are no other eBird records for that period. However, if you select just the month of October for White-throated Sparow you’ll see there are a lot of records. Sorting through those records by clicking on the individual markers, you can get an idea of when the first birds begin to arrive. You can also look at the line graphs to get a better sense of the trend in October. The line graphs shows that WTSP numbers begin to climb by mid Oct and then increase greatly by Nov 1. The line graphs also allow for looking at the most recent date by allowing the selection data for only the last 5 years (see below).
I'm in Atascadero (south of town, adjacent to the Santa Margarita Ranch), and the Lark Sparrows have been dripping off the trees here for the past couple weeks (several flocks of more than two dozen birds each).
This morning as I was walking my neighborhood, Merlin picked up White-throated Sparrow. I couldn't find it either visually or with my own ears (in the field or when playing the Merlin recording back), so I'm clearly not counting it. But it did bring up the question of when they can be expected to return. The one August record near me that I'm aware of was the 2024 one in KJZ's yard, and that one doesn't count since it never left for the summer.
Does anyone know a more effective way of looking this up in eBird than to use the bar charts for the whole county?
You can't drill down into the individual observations that way.
