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WA Sightings

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Subject: WA Sightings
From: Frank O'Connor <>
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:22:29 +0800

It would be good in some ways to see the current list of WA sightings on Eremea. The mega sightings are already posted. I was approached to moderate it, but I don't have time. I have often fallen behind on the current list. There are a few reasons for not simply switching to Eremea.

Birds Australia WA prints a quarterly newsletter WA Bird Notes. This includes a summary of the sightings. However, the sightings for the March WABN need to be summarised by the end of January, so WABN is at least a month behind if you are looking for rarities to go looking for. Historically, there was a written list kept in the office and you could call the office (during office hours) and ask for the sightings. There was also a separate phone number for the sightings (now the BAWA fax number). Again, this wasn't very satisfactory for rapid distribution of information.

Birding-aus helped greatly for the main rarities, except that few WA birders subscribed to birding-aus. This has changed, but it is still under utilised by WA birders.

So in 2001, I proposed that BAWA should expand the web site that Allan Burbidge had created on his web site. The main reasons were for the sightings, and also to put the series of WA bird guide brochures online. I was appointed the web site administrator. I also created an email for people to report the sightings. That way when I pass the role on to someone else, the email would not change. One advantage was that this allows sightings other than those unusual enough for WABN to be reported.

I am away many times during the year, so it was never meant to be a site to get information about the rarities. It simply reports the date, observer, species and location. Rarities should be reported to birding-aus and the birdswa email list. The WA Sightings (and the Eremea list) are moderated and so there will always be a delay. Emails to birding-aus and birdswa can also include full details about directions, behaviour, etc.

I am still the 'convenor' of the WA Rarities Committee. Basically this means that at the end of each quarter (end of January, April, July and October) I select out the sightings that are worthy of inclusion in the next WABN, and I email this list to the other people on the rarities committee. For the major rarities, I have usually forwarded them the information that I received at the time. The WA Sightings are split into four regions (Metropolitan, South West, Arid and Broome) plus WABN also includes Ashmore, Cocos and Christmas. Eremea doesn't allow me to break up WA (it could do it but it probably wouldn't make sense). To save me time, I highlight the records that will probably be included in WABN in red (bold for the major rarities and bold capitals for the mega rarities).

I archive the sightings once I have done the summary, and start a new page (with links to the archive).

Late in 2008, the national office of BA agreed to host the BAWA web site, and Jen Sutfin did a sensational job within the limits that the software provided. But this didn't enable the sightings to be taken over, so I continue to maintain this (on the BAWA development domain birdswa.org.au) and the national web site links to it. You should not assume that the sightings will continue to be on that domain. You should link to birdsaustralia.com.au/wa and then click on the WA Sightings link on the right.

I proposed to Jen that BA create an Australian Sightings database with the following fields :

1. State (e.g. WA, Ashmore, Cocos, Christmas, ...)
2. Region (e.g. for WA would be Metropolitan, South West, Arid, Kimberley)
3. Date (e.g. a simple date 05/01/2010, or a date range, or something like early 12/2009 - all are possible for this field)
4. Observer (or observers)
5. Species (or list of species - but could be free text to allow some comments such as 1st record, or photographs, or ... But sometimes you need to write snipe sp. or swiftlet sp. to complicate matters) 6. Rarity Level (say 1 to 5 with 1 being mega rarity - this would allow the entry to be displayed differently. e.g. 1 would be bold capital red, 2 is bold red, 3 red, 4 other, 5 unconfirmed / possible. Note that this is tricky as each species in the list needs a level) 7. Date Reported (this allows the archiving ability - note that I do get records that are very old, so the date of observation cannot be used for this - the user would then also have the option of displaying in date of sighting order or in date reported order with most recent first)

This would allow me to extract the WA records reported since my last summary for WABN for rarity levels 1 to 3, sorted within region by taxonomic order and date of sighting. This structure could be used by every state.

A secondary functionality was to create an email list where people could register to receive sightings. They would check a box for each of the states, regions and levels they wish to be notified for.

About this time, Eremea was created. Jen couldn't do the above with the current software anyway, so this hasn't progressed, and is probably unlikely to progress.

I know that some people are upset that the sightings are moderated. They need to be moderated so that any queries can be handled. Some people get upset if you question a sighting, but they need to understand that this must be part of the process. This is very tricky. The hardest I have had to deal with is Ian May's report of large numbers of Forest Kingfishers on Weaber Plains at Kununurra. This would be the first official record for WA!! There have been a few previous unofficial reports (including one by me at the south end of Lake Argyle but I also failed to document it). The committee decided that Ian's report was not enough to be included in WABN (and hence would be reported as a 5 above), but I note that it has been reported in other magazines. Black Kites in the south west has been another contentious issue.

The current situation is not perfect. I have reached the point where I would be happy to pass the role of WA Sightings on to someone. The current method requires them to know how to create and edit a web page (I use Front Page but any program would be suitable, and also to be able to judge each sighting. It is very difficult to find someone with these abilities and with the time. I have a lot of birding planned this year, which means that I will be away much more, and that the WA Sightings will fall behind more than usual. This could come to a head at the end of October when I will probably be away when the December summary needs to be done.

In summary, for WA sightings :

1. Use the birding-aus (and birdswa) email lists to report sightings, especially mega sightings.
2. Please copy  in for rare or unusual WA sightings.
3. You are welcome to also post it on Eremea.
4. To look at the sightings, use birdsaustralia.com.au/wa as your link and then click on WA Sightings (If you link directly to the WA Sightings, then it will fail to work sometime in the future when things are improved)

This email wasn't intended to be this long!! But as you see, even something seemingly simple as reporting sightings can have complexities and other issues that are involved.


_________________________________________________________________
Frank O'Connor           Birding WA http://birdingwa.iinet.net.au
Phone : (08) 9386 5694 Email :
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