What counts on a life list
Your eBird data holds more rows than you have species. Some rows are birds nobody could pin to one species, some are hybrids, some are birds that escaped from a cage. This page says which of them make the poster, and why, using the columns of the file and eBird’s own help pages.
The Countable column
A Life List download has a column named Countable. A 1 means eBird counts that row on your life list. A 0 means it does not. Life List Print keeps the rows with a 1 and leaves the others off, so the number on the poster is the number eBird gives you. Nothing is worked out on this side.
Here is how the rows of one real world life list (886 rows) were split. This is one file, not a rule about every file:
| Category | Exotic | Countable | Rows |
|---|---|---|---|
| species | (blank) | 1 | 821 |
| species | N | 1 | 11 |
| species | X | 0 | 1 |
| spuh | (blank) | 0 | 28 |
| slash | (blank) | 0 | 23 |
| hybrid | (blank) | 0 | 1 |
| domestic | X | 0 | 1 |
Every row with a 1 was a species. Every row with a 0 was one of the other kinds below.
Spuhs, slashes, hybrids and domestic types
These are the names eBird’s taxonomy article uses. It was read on 14 October 2026 (The eBird Taxonomy).
- Spuh
- An identification at genus level or broader, written with “sp.”, such as “swan sp.” You saw a swan and could not say which. In the sample above, 28 rows.
- Slash
- An identification to a pair of species, such as “Tundra/Trumpeter Swan”. You knew it was one of two. In the sample, 23 rows.
- Hybrid
- A cross between two species, such as “Tundra x Trumpeter Swan (hybrid)”. In the sample, 1 row.
- Domestic
- A distinctly plumaged domesticated variety that may be free-flying, such as “Mallard (Domestic type)”. eBird says these do not count on personal lists. It names two exceptions where a domestic-origin bird does count: “Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)” and “Muscovy Duck (Established Feral)”. In the sample, 1 row, a domestic goose.
eBird’s article also lists intergrades, which are crosses between subspecies. None appeared in the sample, so what the Countable column says about them is UNVERIFIED here; whatever the file says is what is used.
The Exotic column: escapees, naturalized and provisional birds
eBird sorts birds that are in a place because people moved them into three exotic categories: Naturalized, Provisional and Escapee. Its help article “Exotic and Introduced Species in eBird” (read 14 October 2026) says Provisional species count towards your life list, and that escapees do not. It also says the category is given in the “Exotic” column of Life List downloads.
In the sample, N appeared on 11 species that eBird counts, and X appeared on a Graylag Goose and on the domestic goose, neither of which eBird counts. The article does not spell out the letters. That N means Naturalized and X means Escapee is read from the sample’s behaviour, and the letter for Provisional was not in the sample at all, so both letter meanings are UNVERIFIED against eBird’s own documentation. This does not change the count on the poster, because the poster follows Countable and not the letter.
Why a full-data export can give a different count
The “Download My Data” file is one row per observation. It has no Category, Exotic or Countable column in the file used to test this site. Its header begins:
Submission ID,Common Name,Scientific Name,Taxonomic Order,Count,State/Province,County,Location, …So Life List Print has to work out the species list from the names. These are its rules, which are its own and not eBird’s:
- A name ending in “sp.” (a spuh), a name with “/” in it (a slash), a name with “x” between two species or “(hybrid)” (a hybrid), and a name with “(Domestic type)” (a domestic type) are left off.
- A name with a form or subspecies in brackets, such as “Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle)”, is folded into its species, and the earliest sighting among them is the first-seen date.
- Escapees cannot be told apart, because the file has no column that says so. A bird that eBird treats as an escapee but that appears under a normal species name is counted.
These rules come close, not exact. That is why the page tells you when it worked from a full export, and why the Life List is the better file to drop. Newer full-data files may carry an extra “Exotic Code” column, which eBird’s exotic-species article mentions; Life List Print does not read it.
Order and families
Species are shown in the order of the Taxon Order column of your file, which is eBird’s own sequence. Family headings come from AviList, the global checklist of birds, which is licensed CC BY 4.0. A species whose genus is not in the AviList table goes under a last heading, “UNPLACED”, rather than being guessed into a family.
Sources read
- eBird Help Center, “The eBird Taxonomy”: https://support.ebird.org/en/support/solutions/articles/48000837816-the-ebird-taxonomy. Read 14 October 2026. Covers hybrids, intergrades, spuhs, slashes and domestics.
- eBird Help Center, “Exotic and Introduced Species in eBird”: https://support.ebird.org/en/support/solutions/articles/48001218430-exotic-and-introduced-species-in-ebird. Read 14 October 2026, down to the section on bar charts (the page was cut off after that when read). Covers the three exotic categories and the Exotic column.
- The table and the header rows above come from two real eBird downloads checked on 14 October 2026: one world Life List and one full-data export.