Yeah, definitely could be an issue for the Houston map, but on the larger-scale one you can see that other places don't increase in concentration like Texas does.
The best piece of evidence I've seen for the effect of COVID on ebird stats generally is that the number of checklists submitted for this year's Great Backyard Bird Count, which is the second weekend in February, was up 47% this year. The number normally trends up over time but not by nearly that much in a year. But it's a backyard bird count; there are more people counting birds in their backyards, but that doesn't mean more people counting birds overall, since people aren't traveling as much to count birds. Personally, I have counted birds way more because of COVID (though I was already counting birds most days when COVID started, so maybe not as much more as I think) ... I guess there will also be people who have counted birds less because of COVID, because counting pretty much the same birds in your yard every day could get boring for some people.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2021-04-04 08:37 pm (UTC)The best piece of evidence I've seen for the effect of COVID on ebird stats generally is that the number of checklists submitted for this year's Great Backyard Bird Count, which is the second weekend in February, was up 47% this year. The number normally trends up over time but not by nearly that much in a year. But it's a backyard bird count; there are more people counting birds in their backyards, but that doesn't mean more people counting birds overall, since people aren't traveling as much to count birds. Personally, I have counted birds way more because of COVID (though I was already counting birds most days when COVID started, so maybe not as much more as I think) ... I guess there will also be people who have counted birds less because of COVID, because counting pretty much the same birds in your yard every day could get boring for some people.