David,
Does anyone at Birds Australia, or whatever they are now known as, actually check these records? Recently while at the ANWC museum, along with the lady doing a lot of the background work for the Atlas of Living Australia, I checked a few species in the Iron Range area as I was about to travel up there. One of the species was Northern Scrub-robin using BA data. I was astonished to see that there were several records way out in the Coral Sea. The same goes with the Eremaea database when we checked some species on that. There were records of Satin Bowerbirds in the Mitchell Grass plains of central Queensland. I pointed this out to Alastair Smith at the time and he said he would pass on to the “co-ordinator” (for want of a better word) of the Eremaea database these dodgy records. I have not heard anything back from him! These are just some of the errors we found just by “playing” with the relevant databases. Heaven knows how many other wrong records there are!
I am not saying that I disagree with Jude’s record, especially given that the species is a known wanderer, but if these records are not vetted properly then they are not worth a pinch of you know what. It is because of these erroneous records that things get totally fouled up when producing things like field guides, environmental impact statements etc.
Cheers,
Mark
From: David McDonald (personal) [
Sent: Sunday, 5 February 2012 3:57 PM
To: CanberraBirds
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] south coast black-tailed native hen
Yes this appears to be a range extension. The most southerly record on the NSW coast, to date, is Wollongong. See map below.
It is important that the record get into Birds Australia's data base birdata.com.au.
David
On 5/02/2012 2:53 PM, jude hopwood wrote:
Positive identification by a relative of mine of a Black-tailed Native-hen at Bendalong beach yesterday afternoon. Is this a little out of its usual area? Not seen there before after 30 years of week-ending. I know this is not ACT, but so many of you are conversant with the usual/unusual across Australia, I thought you might know.
