Hi,
As many may be aware 2014 is COG’s 50th year anniversary. One item on the agenda for the year is a Bird of the Year project. For various reasons, including the fact that the COG logo is the Gang-gang, we have decided to try and find out as much information as we can within the COG area of interest over the coming year on our adopted species.
The survey starts tomorrow and I urge all interested members and non-members to have a look at the COG website for details on how to enter observations- see http://canberrabirds.org.au/ and follow the link titled ‘Gang-gang project’ on the ribbon at the bottom of the home page. Information will also be found in the forthcoming February COG newsletter. We have been lucky enough to have Atlas of Living Australia develop an on-line data entry portal for us and I urge participants to use that facility. For those who prefer, we are also providing datasheets that can be submitted to COG by post or through the Red Box at monthly meetings.
I would ask that observations be submitted either via the datasheet or preferably through the web portal. Please do not use the chat-line as a means of submitting records but by all means share interesting observations.
It is envisaged that there will be progress reports produced and these will be placed on the COG website. Observations submitted on-line can then be quickly integrated into these reports rather than having to wait for hard copy datasheets to be entered into a database.
Please note there will be two types of surveys; the first will involve the continual collection of ad hoc observations, the second a mini Garden Bird Survey that will be run for a week, four time a year- see details on the COG website.
We would like to collect as many observations as possible within the COG area of interest but we realise that for some areas there will be no observations whilst in others the birds are continually present. For those areas where birds are always present, instead of submitting daily records, I would ask that a record be submitted say once a week with a comment indicating how frequently bird were observed over the past week.
On the web you will notice there is a specific email link if you have any queries and again please use this facility rather than the chat-line.
This new venture for COG sets us off into the unknown and exciting world of community participation, citizen science, web portals and hopefully a soon to be announced mobile phone app. Let us hope that through your participation we will find out more about the habits of the Gang-gang and so provide information for their improved management in the ACT and NSW.
Good Gang-gang watching.
Chris Davey (B of Y coordinator)
