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Rare bird sitings along Moonee Ponds Ck [whataboutMerri Ck? - both Melbo

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Subject: Rare bird sitings along Moonee Ponds Ck [whataboutMerri Ck? - both Melbourne area]
From: "Peter Ewin" <>
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:17:01 +1100
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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