Counting C Myna in GBS

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Hi Bob,

 

I think you missed my earlier message from Sunday, quoting the GBS instructions that date back 20 years. Which was a clarification (I designed after discussions with  others) to avoid the vagueness of the instructions of V1 & V2 of the GBS charts. "USE of the garden is explicitly not a criterion for counting for the GBS." Obviously and before anyone asks, that does not mean that birds that use the garden are excluded, it means that there is no need for the survey participant to even consider whether or not the birds present in the area are "using" the area. This is simply because such thought hopefully avoids survey inconsistencies in which different people might have different ideas on what is meant by the word "use" and it overly complicates the survey method to need to decide on this issue, when at the end of each week you are already considering multiple counts of multiple species on multiple days.

 

In any case in your question, the bird was free living and alive there (before it died or in Paul's question before it was trapped) that is good enough. If however there is reasonable expectation that a bird found dead could or is likely to have been transported there after dying, by hurricane, storm water, human transport or some predator and it is not beyond reasonable doubt that it had been alive there, then I would be inclined to leave it out of a GBS record. But as we are asking about a common bird of which others surely are in the area anyway, what does it matter? Also if one finds a dead bird that could have been dead for weeks or months and can be identified by feathers or skeletal features but too difficult to know what week it would have been present alive in the area, I would not include it on GBS. But surely for one to even bother asking the question, it would need to be a rare species and there are better ways to retain that information if it is.

 

Philip

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Rusk [
Sent: Tuesday, 4 June 2013 7:30 AM
To: Chris Davey; 'Sue Lashko'; 'Paul Fennell'; 'canberrabirds chatline'
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Counting C Myna in GBS

What happens if the bird never actually had time to use the garden but only died there ? and then where the gardens only use was to bury it there?. Its a tricky one to answer so over to you Philip.

Bob

From: Chris Davey <>
To: 'Sue Lashko' <>; 'Paul Fennell' <>; 'canberrabirds chatline' <>
Sent: Sunday, 2 June 2013 2:20 AM
Subject: RE: [canberrabirds] Counting C Myna in GBS

The count is about the birds that use your garden.  Birds can use a garden in all sorts of ways. If it happens to use it to die then it still gets counted.

 

Chris

 

From: Sue Lashko [
Sent: Sunday, 2 June 2013 9:55 AM
To: Paul Fennell; canberrabirds chatline
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Counting C Myna in GBS

 

It was alive and in the GBS when trapped - no different from you seeing a bird in the GBS and then the cat eating it!

 

Sue

On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 9:44 AM, Paul Fennell <> wrote:

Hi everyone

 

To me, this is akin to Schrödinger’s cat, but with a practical aspect.

 

I one traps a Myna bird and disposes of it.  Does it appear on the GBS Chart as a one or a zero?

 

Cheers

 

Paul

 

Paul Fennell

Editor Annual Bird Report

COG Databases Manager

 

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