Thank you for raising this again and it needs to be raised and not simply
ignored. It is indeed a vexed question.
The point of the breeding record is for COG to have a record that breeding
is occurring ( or has occurred). The dilimma is how to record an
observation that there are young and that a breeding event has clearly
occurred when the parents are not actually feeding the young (or not even
present).
I had just this problem today. I put out a little seed (please no
discussion of that!!) and three kinds of finches come.
With the Red-browed Finches, 8 or 10 adults have been coming for the past
few months. Suddenly yesterday there were about 15 juveniles, (minus the
red brow) excitedly being boisterous in the bitd feeder. The adults were
not seen actually feeding them but it was obvious that breeding had taken
place. I put Œdy¹ in my GBS on the rationalisation that the young were
still accompanying the parents and being shown the local food sources.
But what I felt I needed was an additional category like Œywa¹ (young with
adults) or something. I realise that is still not totally suitable but
something is needed.
Another problem is with a isolated young bird. Yesterday I saw one of the
very young Buff-banded Rails at Forde but did not see the parent. I KNOW
it was hatched in January and have reported it as Œdy¹ earlier. But if
this had been my one and only sighting of an obviously young bird, how do
I record it?
On 27/01/2015 5:11 pm, "Perkins, Harvey" <>
wrote:
>Con this is a vexed and ongoing issue.
>
>To be blunt (and I may incur the wrath of some other COG members or
>database people), I treat DY as meaning "dependent young", whatever that
>description might entail, and do not restrict it to whether I actually
>saw food being passed from parent to offspring. How would you treat a
>clearly dependent offspring of a precocious bird (i.e. on that feeds
>itself from hatching, such as Black-fronted Dotterel)?
>
>As far as I'm concerned, the indicator of DY is to indicate that the bird
>is dependent on a parent as a subset of categories of codes whose overall
>purpose is to capture in the COG records that breeding has occurred.
>Without such an interpretation, as you said, the database loses a lot of
>valuable information. If DY was meant to indicate "seen being fed by
>parent" the code should have been something else. That said, I do agree
>that the code DY should only be used when a bird is clearly dependent on
>a parent, a decision which can still be fairly subjective when the bird
>is IPDY or even IWDY.
>
>My thoughts...
>
>Harvey
>
>
>Dr Harvey Perkins
>CRC Programme Liaison Officer
>Phone +61 2 6213 7472
>Email:
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Con Boekel
>Sent: Tuesday, 27 January 2015 4:49 PM
>To: cog list
>Subject: [canberrabirds] 'Dy or not dy?' that is the question.
>
>Going for a constitutional this afternoon in BMNR, I noticed that there
>was a young Noisy Friarbird begging noisily. The parent bird was busy
>feeding itself and on four or five occasions found some prey and ingested
>it. Each time the begging youngster approached the adult bird too closely
>and increased its begging investment (more and louder calls) the adult
>bird would engage in some sort of behaviour which clearly contained the
>message: 'Rack off'. So, not dy.
>
>There was a similar scenario with two adult and one young Yellow-tailed
>Black Cockatoo at JWNR two days ago. Again the adult bird, with a tasty
>morsel - freshly hewn from its former home inside an acacia branch -
>lunged at the young bird as if to say, 'Rack off!'. Not dy.
>
>Then again, this afternoon, two Sacred Kingfisher youngsters in BMNR sat
>around begging, apparently waiting to be fed. The parent was about, did
>not catch anything with which to feed them and did not feed them. Not dy.
>
>A group of three young Noisy Friarbirds along Upper David Street, the
>cultural boundary between Turner and O'Connor, were all begging lustily.
>But they were all also actively feeding on whatever is infesting the
>street eucs, said infestation having attracted significant numbers of the
>usuals. Not dy.
>
>Also attracted to said infestation were two Red Wattlebirds. One of which
>was feeding and the other of which was begging. No transfer of food
>occurred. Not dy.
>
>In a garden nearby, a young Magpie-lark was begging in the harsh and
>strangled tones with which young Magpie-larks may signal that their
>voices are breaking. Its companion was actively feeding itself but not
>the young bird. Not dy.
>
>Four gardens along, a young Pied Currawong was begging (disconsolately,
>if one wanted to be anthropomorphic about it) and not being fed. Not dy.
>
>If COG had a breeding category 'IPDY' (Immediate Post Dependent Young) or
>possibly even 'IWDY' (I Want to be a Dependent Young) I would have had
>many a record to add to the COG database, including a rare breeding
>record for the YTBC.
>
>But alas, I came up with many an NDY instead.
>
>
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