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Hi All,
I have often written on this line about the
Garden Bird Survey (GBS) that has been running in
Canberra continuously since July 1981. It is nice to say (and I'm surprised
nobody else has done so on birding-aus, yet) that on 14 July the book:
"Birds of Canberra Gardens" will be
launched. This is built around the results of this survey and contains summaries
of many of the species, based on monitoring over a 17 year period, from 1101
observer years of data. The text is somewhat derived from the analysis work I
did on that quite immense database. It describes monthly abundances of the bird
species and long term aspects. It is based on real data, rather than just
impressions. It chronicles many major changes in our bird fauna over those 17
years. It will be fully illustrated by a whole heap of original, pretty nice
pictures. Copies will be available from Canberra Ornithologists Group
(COG).
As well as that, there will somewhat soonish thereafter, be a
release of my report on the COG Garden Bird Survey. This will have many similarities to but also differ
from the book. It is intended for a more bird-savvy audience. It describes the
survey history and methods in detail and explains the issues of understanding
the results. It will include notes on all the species where there is something
useful to say, that being far more species than in the book, which I believe is
based on just the (about) 100 most often recorded species. It won't have all the
colour pictures. It will in most cases include more information on the details
of bird abundances and distribution and will be based on 18, rather than 17
years of continuous data. It discusses the aspects of understanding bird
abundances and recording rates and looks at the data as a whole, describing
rates at which species are recorded or found breeding
etc.
I think the book is likely to be of great
interest to many of you and just be a nice thing to have. The second production
(my report) is an important addition to the first but, beyond that, should be of
major value to anyone, anywhere with an interest in long term bird surveys and
understanding the patterns of change and constancies that they reveal. There
originally was no intention to issue these as separate documents. That has come
out of a complex history during which it was decided that a book with colour
pictures would be the best way of presenting a simplified view of the data to a
broad audience yet the more detailed interpretation (that I was especially keen
on) was so important it needs to come out but this is best achieved by doing it
in a different form.
By the way, all this is entirely my opinion.
Justified as I am the one who basically did the compilation and analysis of the
GBS results and was most closely associated with the genesis of the project to
write up of the GBS results. Many other people (mostly COG members) also did a
lot of work on the book to be released next week.
Philip Veerman (Phone
02-62314041)
24 Castley Circuit
Kambah ACT 2902
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