Birda is designed to support the logging of wild birds, so please avoid posting any sightings of captive or domestic species on the platform.
What about non-native birds living in the wild?
Logging non-native birds living in the wild is, however, crucial because data collected on these species helps conservation researchers better understand the expansion of invasive non-native species.
Captive/domestic birds and the GBIF
Bird's public sighting data is shared with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The GBIF is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world's governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, with open access to data about all types of life on Earth. Researchers that use GBIF sightings data are generally only interested in wild birds, so sightings of captive or domestic species reduce the quality of the data they work with. We have no simple way to remove captive or domestic species signings from our submissions to the GBIF so this is the primary reason why we ask our users to avoid posting sightings of captive or domestic species.
Captive/domestic birds and species Lists
Another technical issue we have with logging captive species is that our species lists only include bird species that are known to live wild at any specific location or region. Including captive bird species in our lists would also increase the size of our lists significantly. These expanded species lists confuse people who are new to birding and increase miss-identifications as there will be significantly more species for users to choose from.