Rare bird sitings along Moonee Ponds Ck [whataboutMerri Ck? - both Melbourne area]

["Peter Ewin" <>]

These problems are probably common to all databases dealing with fauna. The 
Atlas of NSW Wildlife (NOWS's database) for a long time (and possibly still) 
had more records of Glossy Black-cockatoos than Yellow-taileds even though 
the latter was listed as a threatened species and the latter not. There had 
been an emphasis on collecting threatened species records and many observers 
would also only supply them, resulting in many more records than of common 
species. The same happened with Owls with many records of Powerful Owls and 
virtually none of Barking Owls (which in my opinion are far rarer in NSW) 
until the latter was listed much later (which then triggered a wave of 
records of the latter species).
If I record a threatened species I usually record all the common stuff at 
the same site to try and make the database as useful as possible (because 
who knows what common species will be regarded as threatened in the future).
Cheers,
Peter


> From: Paul Jacobson <>
> To: "Dave Torr" <>
> CC: 
> Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Rare bird sitings along Moonee Ponds Ck 
> [whataboutMerri Ck? - both Melbourne area]
> Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2007 14:52:52 +1100
>
> That's a very true observation. A case in point are the Swift Parrot  
> sightings in Royal Park. There were a couple of Swifties in Royal  Park for 
> a period of about 1-2 weeks but they show up as 16% as there  was a flurry 
> of reports to birdline, whereas Red-Rump Parrots are  listed as 32% and I 
> see anywhere between 2 and a dozen virtually  every day. Similarly Little 
> Lorikeets are quite plentiful at present  - watched 6 preening in a tree 
> top this morning - but they show up as  4%.
> So it's while probably advisable to treat the % as highly suspect,  but I'd 
> still maintain the species lists tend to be fairly accurate.
> Obviously errors do creep in as we all make id mistakes as Dave  observes. 
> Places like Melbourne Zoo are also very difficult as many  free range birds 
> are part of the collection, and the Eremaea list  does seem to include a 
> number of collection species.
> cheers
> Paul
>
> On 08/02/2007, at 2:25 PM, Dave Torr wrote:
>
> > My experience with looking at Eremaea for some sites leads me to  believe
> > that the rarities get reported rather more readily than the common  birds 
> > -
> > not a fault of the software of course but again something than you  need 
> > to
> > be aware of.
>
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