LIST OF ACRONYMS

[Julian Robinson <>]

Philip - I most definitely did make this list just for the chatline - it
is meant to serve an entirely different purpose from the other
standardised abbreviations you mention.  As I said, I'm not aiming
to make this a standard to be followed, it is meant to allow the average
user to decipher what some other imperfect member is talking about. Hence
in one context BF may mean a Brown Falcon, and in another it's 
Beautiful Firetail. Hopefully the author will have included the name in
full or at least a clue beforehand, assuming we have the entire text at
hand.  But even if they choose to write B Firetail the list
will usefully allow that to be decoded to "beautiful" if you
look up "BF".

Before anyone else worries that I'm using up my breakfast cereal for
little result, I didn't type out the words!  This is modified from
the local species list to which I added the acronyms; not a single bird
name has been typed by me!  It didn't take long, but I reckon it is
useful. You may disagree...

I do agree that you shouldn't use an acronym just because it has been
stuck in a list, and certainly not obscure ones.  But if we make a
short list by excluding these obscure birds, as sure as eggs we'll leave
out exactly the one that someone needs.  I think it needs to be
comprehensive to be useful.

Once again, I am not suggesting that this is a list of official
abbreviations for any purpose, it is a decoding list of informal
abbreviations that people tend to use on the chatline.

Julian


At 04:02 PM 2/08/2007, Philip Veerman wrote:

Hi Julian,
 
Wow, I hope that you did not do all that work just for us. There actually is an established list of 4 letter acronyms for all of the Australian bird species. That is developed according to various rules. A similar system is used in USA. For the Aus bird list,  I believe that only needed to be bent for Buff-rumped and Brown Thornbill, which would have come out the same. The GBS Birds database already includes them all (which is most local species), although it isn't used in any practical sense. It uses the "Atlas" numbers. The reason is that in the mid 1980s McComas Taylor processed the GBS bird data in the (difficult to use) system he developed, using those codes (and then he used Pizzey numbers and then than I've forgotten what) I adapted the codes (I think it was David McDonald who brought the full set to my notice), until we went just with the numbers, but the 4 letter codes are still in there. I can easily output the list for you (or anyone else).
 
I favour the use of acronyms whilst they are easy, as in refer to things that we would often talk or write about. I don't favour to have an acronym for everything. I would not favour for example: AF  Azure Kingfisher. For uncommon species or those not already in the conversation, people would end up expending more energy in confusion and explaining than saved at the start. Also there is no point having duplicated acronyms (one that refers to more than one species). There are several in your list.
 
Philip