Please ignore my earlier message that was not well
phrased. What I meant to offer was an observation and
suggestion about the various options we have for
reporting bird sightings around Canberra. It has been
discussed before but I, and I am sure many others,
have missed some important points. I did not mean to
write an advertisement for Birdline (Eremaea), and was
originally only calling for an obvious rationalisation
one way or the other, but now that I’ve learnt more
about its existing capabilities, the below now is a
bit of an advertisement for changing from members
entering sightings to the COG database to members
entering via Birdline.
At the moment, when a COG member returns from a
successful day at Kelly's swamp, they might decide to
do the following with their observations:
- enter them into their own private list/record
system, which might be a paper book or computer or
phone based software etc.
- enter them to the COG Database (from where they can
eventually find their way to the national BA system)
- enter them to Birdline (Eremaea)
- and then post the fact that they saw a sandpiper or
godwit to the Chatline.
Very few people will do all of these, and even less
will do all of them regularly. As a result many good
observations are missed by either of the databases.
The integrity and usefulness of these databases is
proportional to the number of entries and the
completeness of the entries made, so we are clearly
not making the best use of resources to split a fewer
number of reported sightings in several directions.
The technology exists, if we want to use it, to
either combine some of these databases or more likely,
the entry of data to them, so that people only have to
enter things once or twice. My suggestion is that
because of the significant advantages, COG should in
its own interests and the interests of its members,
investigate the rationalisation of data entry.
I understand that Birdline already offers the
capability to do much of the rationalisation and
therefore we should seriously consider using it instead
of entering to the COG database.
- entering to Birdline is much simpler and more
reliable.
- the information posted to Birdline is (if you tick
a box) passed to BA and therefore eventually finds its
way back to the COG database so you are getting your
info to ALL the relevant databases with a single
posting.
- data on Birdline is accessible to all, that is, you
can interrogate it to find out when you last saw a
Bar-tailed Godwit, or (I think) how many have been
seen in the ACT region, and when etc.
- you can elect to be notified automatically (by
email from Birdline) at every sighting of nominated
birds, so you could know quickly as soon as a Painted
Snipe etc arrived by a system that already exists.
There are complications including how to handle
paper-based entries, ownership and integrity of data,
possibly COG paying for the Eremaea service, and
getting people familiar with a new system and its
capabilities, but these are easily solvable and I
believe it would be in the best interests of COG, its
database and its members to embrace some kind of
rationalisation as soon as possible.
The above system could be further improved by
modifying some home-based bird database systems so
that they are able to automatically submit each report
to BIrdline. Then even people who elected to keep
their own home-based system would only have to enter
data once. Imagine the extra number of sightings that
would end up in the COG database if we had such a
system. Is there any reason that I’ve missed for COG
to keep the current data entry arrangement?
Julian
