January 7th, 2025
Malta Bird Sightings improves its functionalities and its already fully connected to the EBP data flow
In January 2021 BirdLife Malta launched a new online bird recording portal, named Malta Bird Sightings (MBS), to serve as a portal for local birders to submit their ornithological records. Prior to that, a number of other systems were used, with the last being World Birds, decommissioned in 2015. Following that, unstructured systems such as private FB groups were used, leaving some gaps in observation data.
Using public portals like eBird was never really an option for Maltese
birders given the difficult situation with hunting for taxidermy; posting
sightings on such portals would be dangerous for both the birds and the birders
themselves!
MBS was immediately taken up by the local birding community and usage is
consistently on the increase. As of 1st October 2024 more than 19
thousand birding sessions have been logged by approximately 80 users. Thanks to
the system, since 2021, an annual Malta Bird Report is now also being
published, with 2023 being launched soon.
In 2022, driven mainly by Article 12 reporting obligations, it was
modified to facilitate standardized data collection for various types of
surveying including migration monitoring and breeding bird surveys. The latter
involved the introduction of visual representation of sampling square, transect
and point based sampling etc. which was accessible on mobile devices and hence
enabled direct inputting by the surveyors in the field.
In 2023 and 2024 modifications were done in order to prepare for, and
eventually complete, the data flow connection with the EBP project.
The first task was to improve the collection of Complete Lists within
MBS. The first key modification involved allowing birders to mark their lists
as complete or not. This was critical to told apart complete lists from incomplete
lists. Secondly, a campaign with local birders was made to encourage the
inputting of complete lists since it was often the case that common species,
particularly resident ones were omitted or had only their presence recorded,
rather than an actual count. This was also successfully achieved with the
majority of the lists submitted are now complete lists.
The remaining percentage is either casual observations, important
observations picked up from social media posts posted by people who are not
part of the local birding (and MBS) community, or double observations of scarce
birds inputted by different birders such that these appear on their year list
totals.
The second task was that to connect MBS to the EBP such that
sightings submitted in MBS become part of the EBP databank. This was a
multi-step approach.
Firstly, the species list needed to be aligned. BirdLife Malta, and
therefore MBS, uses the same list used by BirdLife International; the HBW,
which is also the same list that the EBP uses, thus this made this task easier.
The list was analysed and any discrepancies, including in scientific names
used, were corrected and codes were added.
The second task was to create functionality within MBS that is able to
push data into the EBP API. The EBP API is implemented following proper REST
standards and has excellent documentation, that includes good usage examples.
Furthermore, it is backed by an excellent technical team at ICO that are ready
to help in testing and answer queries. This made this a fairly straightforward
task as well.
A standalone cron-job was built for this specific task. This job was designed to pull data directly from the MBS database, apply any mappings needed and push the data to EBP. Data from 2021 was pushed in batches by running this cron-job manually in Bulk Mode. Live data is pushed every night, using Standard Mode, with the job keeping note of its last successful runtime and picking up data that was added or modified since then. This has been successfully running daily since September 2024, with over 160 thousand records from Malta now present in the EBP.
Work is now being undertaken within BirdLife Malta to encourage birders
to populate their past records (prior to 2021) into MBS, such that this data is
more readily available both for BLM itself and is also in EBP.
These tasks were undertaken thanks to funding received by BLM as part of
the LIFE EBP reinforcement.
An important key to the success of systems like MBS, their continuous
improvements and the timely and successful integration with external systems
such as the EBP, is the technical team or person behind the system. In the case
of MBS, this was myself, a passionate birder and conservationist and part of
the local birding community since a very young age, that studied and worked in
IT for a number of years. The skills gained working in the IT industry together
with the knowledge of the birding situation in Malta, and the needs of BirdLife
Malta, allowed me to be able to build a tailored sightings system. This
eliminated the need for a technical product owner that can translate functional
and ‘business’ requirements into technical ones and also the engagement of a 3rd
party software development company. The former in particular is often not easy
to find in small, conservation NGOs like BLM, and the latter can be very costly
to engage and eventually maintain long-term. These two factors are often the
failing point for the success of such IT systems.
Furthermore since I am now myself employed within BLM as the coordinator of local bird monitoring schemes, this also allows me to continue further enhance MBS to facilitate specific data collection requirements and keep up the data submission momentum with the local birding community. The main challenge such a scenario presents is of course that all the technical knowledge of the system is held by a single person, and this can be a risk which is not easy to mitigate.
Nicolas Galea (BirdLife Malta)
