# Five Bar Gate

> Paste a bird walk's scribbled field notes and get an honest field checklist: every line read into a count and a bird, tallied on a card by family in field-guide order and drawn as five-bar gates, with what a checklist needs before you submit it flagged. A metered tidy pass gives every line a call and drafts the checklist comments. https://five-bar-gate.skillsafe.ai/

## What it does

- Free, in the browser (gatekit.js, birdlist.js, tally.js): reads each line's count ("12", "x12", "~40", "40+", "flock of 30", "a pair", "lots" = no count), its marks (heard, flyover, photo, unsure: "maybe", "?", "I think") and the bird, matched by name, nickname or four-letter banding code against a short list of 225 common North American birds and 38 group names ("hawk sp.", "chickadee" = Black-capped or Carolina...). Adds up lines that name the same bird, totals species (species-level lines only) and birds, and flags: no count, group-only names, ambiguous words, unsure IDs, possible double counts (flyovers or a stationary count), counts of 50 or more, and missing effort (date, duration on a complete list, distance on a traveling list, start time, party size). Its own reading: ready, tidy or rework.
- Metered, one task `tidy`: a call for every line - keep, name (settle an ambiguous word or nickname to one species by region), spuh (report at the level the notes support), count (a number is needed - the model never writes one), document (rare, late or unsure with support: describe it or attach the photo), merge (probably the same birds as an earlier line). Also ID checks (field marks that separate a shaky ID from its confusion species), a verdict, checklist comments built only from the input, the steps before submitting, and caveats.
- The page applies the calls itself: it refuses a rename of a bird the person named, a name on an unsure line, a merge of different birds, and calls on lines that do not exist; a merge counts the larger number once; species and bird totals after tidying are recomputed by the page; numbers in the drafted comments that are not in the notes are flagged.

## Limits

- The bird list is a matching aid, not a range map. Anything about a bird being late, early or unusual for a region is a model's estimate - check your regional checklist.
- Counts are always the observer's. Exports: Markdown, a one-row-per-bird checklist CSV, the comments and the steps.

## Sources

- Built on the SkillSafe skill @mims-harvard/tooluniverse-ecology-biodiversity: https://skillsafe.ai/skill/@mims-harvard/tooluniverse-ecology-biodiversity
- Why now: the October Big Day of 10 October 2026 drew over a million participants and was the first October day past 100,000 checklists: https://ebird.org/news/october-big-day-2026-results
- API: https://five-bar-gate.skillsafe.ai/api.html