Rufous Fantail at Holt

["Philip Veerman" <>]

This is a notable record. Late August is extremely early for this species here. Global warming would suggest that it would be increasingly arriving earlier. The 21 Year GBS Report shows no records for August and a tiny number in September. Even more remarkable is that the COG Atlas (with data from 1986 to 1989 and from a much wider range of habitats) shows the first records in October.

 

I wonder whether anyone else, will think to compare the histograms of combined years of GBS observations, post July 1999 to those of the first 18 years of the GBS, from the first edition GBS Report. It would be easy to tell if the recent graphs have shifted to the left by comparison to those in the GBS Report. Thereby to see what, if any, evidence there is of bird migrations occurring earlier here recently, from our long term GBS data. It should only take a few hours work for someone to do that. Unlike the early years' Annual Bird Reports, the recent ABR have not provided the graphs of monthly abundance from the GBS, with minimal indication in the text of whether the patterns match the typical.

 

Philip