Google Street Maps Birding

I've created a monster.  A nerd monster.  (Instead of terrorizing cities he sits in his mother's cave and plays Basements & Humans).

Occasionally I pass the time slowly scrolling along random streets captured in Google Street View looking for birds.  I'm not proud of it, but as far as Things To Do go it's better than a heroin addition.  I've been able to find a bunch of birds and it's allowed me to travel All Over The WORLD!

There are other images of our world out there on the internet, and one reader, Greg of the Greg and Birds site, has started to find birds in them.  In Google Maps.  Overhead, satellite, far-away images of teeny-tiny birds.  I don't know how he did it, but Greg zoomed way into a lake on the southwest side of Indianapolis (here are the coordinates: 39.851657,-86.302702) and found a ... bird.  I'm not exactly sure what it is.  I captured a screenshot:

Greg suggested Great Egret but the structure doesn't look right.  Maybe its head is tucked up.  The wing shape looks to me more like a gull, but I don't know.  Guesses welcome.

Thank you Greg for this opening up incredible, pathetic new frontier.  God help me when I lose my job for spending the day scanning the backgrounds of real estate photos trying to identify passerines on feeders in the neighbor's yard.  It's an odd world, my friends.

[UPDATE]

Reader Urs Geider sent in a comment with a link to this screenshot showing 38.872515, -90.172794 (the Riverlands area in Missouri, across the Mississippi from Alton, IL). Looks like American White Pelicans to me!  Awesome!  Thanks, Urs.

How To Make A "Where I've Birded" Map Using Your eBird Data

I've always wanted a map showing just the areas I've birded, but didn't know how to get one.  LONG STORY SHORT: I figured it out.  Check it:

Click on it to make it better (but remember this is just a screenshot, not the interactive Google Map that is actually is).

Want one?  Here's what I did:

1. Go to eBird > My eBird > Manage My Locations
2. Make sure you hit "Show All" in the lower right so all of your locations are on one page
3. Select all the text, and copy it into an Excel spreadsheet
4. Delete the "in my locs?" "Type" and "# checklists" columns (and any other stray stuff that got in there).
5. Make sure you have "Location" "Country" "State/Province" and "County" as Row 1 in your spreadsheet, or else insert a new column and add them.  It'll look something like this:
   
   
6. Go to www.BatchGeo.com
7. Copy your spreadsheet into the big "paste here" box at the BatchGeo homepage.
8. Go to Validate & Set Options > Advanced Options and make sure that "Enable clustering for high density markers" is NOT checked.
9. Make the map!  Check it out!

It's pretty cool to see where you've been spending all your birding time (and where you haven't been).  The maps isn't foolproof, and I'm still working out some of the details stemming from oddly-named or inputted eBird checklists (i.e. Washington County, IL shows on the map as Washington, IL - a very different part of the state).  I'm sure you can do a better job than I have, but it's a great way to visualize your birding.