🐦8.2 Cornell Lab of Ornithology Externship Day 3: Serving as a Photo Annotator

Today, I worked on photo annotation and completed 208 annotations. It was enjoyable to rate user-submitted photos, though marking bounding boxes for photos or audio files proved somewhat tedious, especially when species overlapped. I’m excited to have gained access for the Merlin Photo ID annotation system, allowing me to contribute independently to this work in the future… even when I’m not at the lab anymore.

During lunch, I learned about an upcoming eBird feature that will allow users to include observations of other animals alongside birds in their checklists. This enhancement will enable researchers to use eBird’s database to study broader ecological and biodiversity patterns. eBird will collaborate with iNaturalist to ensure a unified taxonomy across platforms, which is an exciting development! I look forward to documenting other wildlife during future birding trips, especially in mountainous regions.

I absolutely loved the office environment and hope to return someday!