Recent eBird Sightings Summary By Loc Web Service API and Gadget

Gadget

The sample gadget utilizing this API: http://ebird.org/tools/google/birds-byloc/ett-byloc-beta.xml.

Example of this gadget on a page: http://ebird.org/tools/google/birds-byloc/sample/sample-estero-llano.html

API

URL	description	status	notes
http://ebird.org/ws1.0/product/byloc/recent	Return summary of recent sightings for most active hotspot over the past 24 hours	deployed
http://ebird.org/ws1.0/product/byloc/recent?locID=L97555&locID=L259855&daysBack=7	Return summary of recent sightings at the given locID(s)	deployed

Parameter Descriptions

parameter	required	default	value options	example value	description	status
locID	no	n/a	locID of hotspot locations	L97555	The data summary is computed using data submitted to the given locIDs (up to three).	deployed
locale	no	en_US	Java standard locale codes	en_US	Language/locale of common names provided in the response (when translations are available)	implemented, not deployed (as of June 27, 2008)
daysBack	no	0	0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7	7	How many days backwards to look in computing the summary. Zero means use observations submitted for today. One means use observations for today and yesterday. Etc.	deployed

Result Caching

Results are cached on the server for 30 minutes, so repeated calls to the same URL will usually result in exacted the same response. The time that the response was actually computed is provided in the header time stamp.

XML Result Format

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<response>
    <header>
        <locale country="US" language="en"/>
        <timestamp>2008-06-27T15:57:58.877-04:00</timestamp>
        <criteria>
            <property id="locID" value="L97555" description="Sapsucker Woods"/>
            <property id="daysBack" value="7"/>
        </criteria>
    </header>
    <result>
        <sighting>
            <species-id>cangoo</species-id>
            <scientific-name>Branta canadensis</scientific-name>
            <common-name>Canada Goose</common-name>
            <how-many>20</how-many>
            <num-checklists>2</num-checklists>
            <obs-dt>2008-06-27</obs-dt>
        </sighting>
        <sighting>
            <species-id>norbob</species-id>
            <scientific-name>Colinus virginianus</scientific-name>
            <common-name>Northern Bobwhite</common-name>
            <how-many>1</how-many>
            <num-checklists>1</num-checklists>
            <obs-dt>2008-06-25</obs-dt>
        </sighting>
    </result>
</response>

Enhancements for eBird gadget/data

add observer name to data and display

Enhancements for eTT gadget/data

Link to AAB species instead of eBird reports
link to map showing location of sighting (using kiosk map)
Identfiy rarities and specialties
Multiple time frames (week, month); for these, show date last observed
Support multiple points (via polygon)

Enhancements targeted for sprint

Add support for "daysBack" parameter where 0 <= days <= 7 to allow adjustable size of time frame.
- Must regurgitate parameter in response header.
- Validation check parameter values.
- Default value is 1, which indicates a time period of midnight of the previous day to "now".
- E.g., "3" would indicate midnight 3 days ago to "now". Thus the report always covers 3 x 24 hours + however far through the day we are right now.
Explore potential to use Oracle Spatial queries to query over a polygon and include multiple locations.

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Recent eBird Sightings Summary ByLoc Web Service API and Gadget