Congratulations to the team that put together the latest 2005-2006
ABR; a great job again, well done.
As every new edition of the ABR is published, it renews my
impression that despite us being an active group of bird watchers, very few
records actually make it onto the database and therefore into the ABR. A case
in point is there were only 15 records of the Common Koel yet any one reading
this forum would think it is the most common bird over summer. Thus it appears
that sightings are reported on Canberrabirds, but are not followed up
with a ‘record’, thereby giving a distorted picture of presence/absence
and abundance in the ABR. The ABR’s overview comments that there were 129
contributors, but 10 contributors submitted 53% of the general records –
what were the others doing with their sightings, or is it just that some
birders prefer not to record sightings at all?
Perhaps one way to help those who post to Canberrabirds but do
not submit records, is for COG could consider developing a formatted email.
Such a facility would allow birders to send all the relevant observation information
(observer, time, place, species, abundance, breeding, comments etc) in a
preformatted email to Canberrabirds (so subscribers have the information), but specifically
the format allows automatic entry into the database.
Of course this ABR was written with data pre new online data
entry system. It makes me wonder if there has been, or will be, an
improvement in the number of records submitted with the system. Certainly with
such a facility we birdos have no excuses not to submit records to COG.
Cheers
Alastair
