eBird Trip Report Enhancements

(Browser extension)

Version 1.0 — 4 December 2023

Questions or comments?

This browser extension provides a set of four enhancements for eBird trip report pages. The enhancements are accessed by clicking on a new button labeled “Add-ons”.

How to install: click the link that is for your browser, then click either "Add to Firefox" or "Add to Chrome". After you have installed the extension, you should see a new button labeled "Add-ons" on your Trip Report pages.

• Link to install Firefox extension

  On Firefox, it's possible that you might not have the "Add-ons" button on Trip Report pages even though you have installed the extension. If you are having this problem, follow these directions.

• Link to install Chrome extension
• Link to install Edge extension

The four enhancements are:

Sort checklists

Sort the list of checklists chronologically from first to last, instead of the default sort of last to first. Repeatedly clicking this choice toggles the sort direction back and forth. Once the list has been sorted for the first time, clicking on the “Checklists” button also toggles the sort direction.

Copy the list of checklist URLs to the clipboard

Clicking Copy checklist URLs doesn't have a visible effect, but it places a list of the URLs of all the report checklists in your clipboard. You can then paste the list into another application that can process such a list.

Download GPS tracks

Clicking "Download GPS tracks" captures all of the available tracks and downloads them in a .gpx file.

GPS tracks will be available only for checklists that you own or that you share. Tracks from hidden or flagged checklists are not included. In a trip report that is shared with others, be sure to switch to your own personal view (where it says "DATA FOR:", select your own name).

The downloaded gpx file can be loaded into Google Earth or other GPS software.

If you open the gpx file in Google Earth, which you can do by drag and drop, you'll get this dialog:

• You need KML LineStrings, so you must check "Create KML Linestrings".
• I can't explain why, but if you leave "Create KML Tracks" checked, you will get tracks in duplicate, so uncheck that box.
• You must leave "Adjust altitudes to ground height" checked. If you uncheck it your tracks will be plotted at sea level, thus out of sight underground.

So you want to change the dialog to look like this before you click "OK":

Export trip report to spreadsheet

Clicking this option takes you to a separate web page (eBird checklist compiler) where you can download the trip report's data into either a spreadsheet or a web page.

Historical note

I previously published separate extensions for two of the enhancements. I have now bundled all of them together, so that this one extension is the only one you need. If you have previously installed either or both of the original extensions, they are now redundant and you can uninstall them. The ones that you can uninstall are named “eBird trip report checklist exporter” and “eBird trip report GPS track downloader”;