That’s right, industrious birders can now enter sightings from anywhere in the world into eBird. One of the issues with the world-widification (no, that is not a word) is that eBird does not necessarily have someone checking on the accuracy of the sightings being reported. See, for example, the all-time top hundred list of birders in Kazakhstan with the most recent bird reported from each birder. Somehow I think that American Crow, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Black Guillemot, Virginia Rail and Yellow-rumped Warbler are all a bit unlikely in Kazakhstan.
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
Of course, eBird is looking for help monitoring reports…
http://ebirdforum.blogspot.com/2010/05/gloabl-ebird-assistance-welcomed.html
The problem could be with people submitting eBird reports by lat/lon. Longitudes in the western hemisphere are negative, and if one were to use a positive number, the site would be placed in the eastern hemisphere.
Negative values of longitude for points in much of Kazakhstan end up corresponding to the northeast part of North America in general.