canberrabirds

Annual bird report and records

To: "'Alastair Smith'" <>, <>
Subject: Annual bird report and records
From: "Barbara Allan" <>
Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 20:34:36 +1000

In so far as the Common Koel is concerned, the picture is not quite so bad as Alastair paints it. Most koels are recorded on Garden Bird charts, rather than as “General” records. And in 2005-06, there were 93 such records. That is, koels were recorded at least once in a given week on 93 occasions. And in my case, there were a couple of weeks when I recorded them several times a day, on a daily basis.

 

His general point about the relatively low numbers of records submitted is one which all of us associated with the ABR struggle with, every year. It is galling to have to declare in the ABR  that there were no breeding records for a species whose breeding has been trumpeted on the chat line. At the very least, I would encourage all of you to check your latest ABR when you see a bird at an unusual time of year, in an unusual location, present in unusual numbers or breeding early, or late. And be sure to put in a record, if indeed your observation differs from what is generally recorded. And of course we’d like to see many more records of all kinds, from more contributors. If you’re keen but don’t know where to start, email me offline. b

 


From: Alastair Smith [
Sent: Sunday, 6 May 2007 2:33 PM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Annual bird report and records

 

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

 

 

 

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