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
