Hello John,
This is specifically a FOUR letter code system. the only odd one being Emu,
which doesn't have 4 letters to choose an extension from. I point out that
there are no "/" or lower case letters in the abbreviations list. There are
some pairs that require some alternates to the usual rules. I had mentioned
the Thornbill one. I don't know what option was chosen for White-breasted
Woodswallow but no doubt something that works. You will note that the list I
included does have Long-billed Corella (LOCO) and Little Black Cormorant
(LBCO) and so they too are clear. I have it on old advice many years ago
that the full list exists for all Australian birds with no ambiguities but I
have not personally checked this. I would feel confident that someone has. I
do not know if these codes have been updated for some new names or for all
the new vagrant species on the Australian list in recent years. I expect
someone on birding aus must have the full Australian list.
The list I sent is only a subset, as it is what I used of relevance to
Canberra. Although as mentioned, I actually built the Garden Bird Survey
(GBS) database for Canberra Ornithologists Group by using the Atlas numbers.
I think a letter code system is easier to remember than numbers.
Please John or anyone, don't think these are my codes. I don't deserve
credit on that one. I did not devise or in any way add to that list. I think
is decades old and long pre dates my interest in these things. I set up the
Word document in the way it was presented and sent to you. According to my
computer, that document I sent to Birding Aus today, was last modified on my
computer in August 1998.
Philip
-----Original Message-----
From: John Harris
Sent: Tuesday, 21 February 2012 1:22 PM
To: Philip VeermanAustralian birds
Cc: Birding Aus
Subject: Letter code abbreviations for all Australian
birds, was SFW feeding HBC,
Hi Phil,
I have used, as mentioned before, a code based on the birds name for years.
There are few ambiguities but some do exist. A Brown Thornbill (BT/b),
Buff-rumped Thornbill (BRT/b). The two woodswallows cause a bit of a problem
- White-breasted and White-browed as both could be written as WBW/s or even
WBrW/s and Long-billed Corella and Little Black Cormorant (LBC's) but I get
over this one using LtBC. It all makes sense to me anyway.........
Your codes will be worth comparing to see how much they are alike.
On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Philip Veerman <>
wrote:
As is clear from this discussion, a 3 letter code does not work.
There is a well established 4 letter code for Australian birds. It works
well with no ambiguities (apart from Brown Thornbill and Buff-rumped
Thornbill would normally both be BRTB, so the latter is BUTH instead.)
Here it is (at least for SE Aust species, which are the ones I was
interested in, as I was doing the data from Canberra, although I believe it
works for all Australian species). The column labelled as RAOU is the Atlas
number, which is the code often used to store the data. For example all of
COG's GBS data was stored by the RAOU number.
Philip
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of John Harris
Sent: Tuesday, 21 February 2012 11:15 AM
To: John Tongue
Cc: Birding Aus
Subject: SFW feeding HBC
White-breasted or White-browed Woodswallows and Channel-billed or
Chestnut-breasted Cuckoos?
I have been using those and similar abbreviations for years, in my note
taking much to the frustration of my fellow birdwatchers, field nats or
fiancee especially when they try to decipher my lists :-)
===============================
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
http://birding-aus.org <http://birding-aus.org/>
===============================
--
Yours in all things "GREEN"
John Harris
Croydon, Vic
0409090955
President, Field Naturalists Club of Victoria
(www.fncv.org.au <http://www.fncv.org.au/> )
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
http://birding-aus.org
===============================
|
