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This is a thoughtful and useful post. Useful also for publication in an upcoming COG newsletter also I expect. I have used the website on various occasions, as you describe, to determine if a species is commonly seen in this area and read about the status in this area. The calls are good too. (And excellent for confusing our cats!) I was not aware of the data and more info buttons. Thanks for pointing this out.
Megan On Friday, January 30, 2015, Julian Robinson <> wrote: Many members and chatliners are unaware of how much can be learned and done using the COG website so below is a tutorial on two topics, based on my own just-filed observation as an example. There is a great deal of information about our local birds there that can answer many of the questions newbies (and old hands) ask, or would like to ask. If you haven’t used all these facilities before, please run through the tutorial, at least to check for parts you might have missed. 
What should chatliners do when they think they’ve observed something avian that might be interesting, but not sure? Apart from posting to the chatline, the short answer is: - check the ID (if necessary) and then find out whether your observation is actually unusual by using the plentiful information at COG website Bird Info, and,
- if it does prove to be interesting or unusual AND it is geographically within the COG area of interest, post an incidental record using the easy-to-use form on the website.
LONG ANSWER - A TUTORIAL ON USING SOME BIRD FEATURES OF THE COG WEBSITE - ID, unusualness, bird info including appearance, distributions and timing, and Entering an Incidental Record. On Australia Day I visited a small property between Gundaroo and Murrumbateman. A White-eared Honeyeater was nesting in the raspberry patch, in a very exposed position (ideal for photography which I duly completed). When I got home I was wondering whether such a breeding event was unusual. In fact, are White-eared Honeyeaters (WEHEs) common in that part of the world at all and at this time of the year? Was it worth reporting this breeding record or not? Following is a detailed description of the information I used to answer those questions. Firstly, if I was unsure about the ID I would obviously look in my bird guides either by flipping through all the likely pages of a hard copy book, or perhaps using the ID aids in electronic bird guides like the Morcombe app. Sometimes however you may need a bit more than the field guides offer, such as immature plumages, or what the bird really looks like in practice, and this is where COG’s photo gallery can help. (* see note at bottom about forthcoming improvements to the gallery) PHOTOS - Go to the website canberrabirds.org.au and fav/bookmark it if you haven’t already.
- Using top menu, go to Our Birds / Bird Info OR - use the shortcut button “Bird Info” at top right of home page.
- By default the table you see is sorted by common name, so to find my WEHE, scroll right down to the White-eared Honeyeater line.
- If I was looking to compare with similar birds I could arrange the table taxonomically by clicking the link at the top, or arrange by “family” by clicking at the head of the Group ** column, so I’d have all the honeyeaters together.
- On the WEHE line, click the small photo icon and you are taken to the page of photos of this bird.* Even now, before we upgrade the gallery, there is a decent array of WEHE photos in various poses, light and situations.
- Click on any thumbnail to see the larger image. To close a large image, click the cross at LOWER right. A somewhat similar cross top right will take you to the full size image if that is available, and back again.
- (As well as informative, some of our gallery photos are quite beautiful. Check out Rhonda Hansch’s photo which is 5th last on my machine, or Tobias Hayashi’s @ the very last thumbnail on my screen.)
- If you wanted to view other honeyeaters for comparison, you can use the left menu to select one, or click the red highlighted “Honeyeaters” in the left menu and browse thumbnails of all the honeyeaters together. (Check out the lovely Spinebill photos too if you do this).
GENERAL SPECIES INFORMATION - Go back to the Bird Info table using back button or top menu or home page shortcut button. Here you can access four interesting sets of information for each species, in addition to the photos.
- Using the WEHE again as our example, click on Garden link and you will be taken to the full contents of COG’s Birds of Canberra Gardens book about the WEHE. Here I discover, for example, some descriptive text about its habits and seasonal movements as well as its annual and seasonal occurrence in Canberra’s suburban gardens. This is interesting though in the case of my example it doesn’t tell me much about rural Gundaroo birds. Click the back button to return to the table.
- Click on Call link to hear, obviously, the call (opens in a separate tab/window) – helpful too in identification, although at most only one call example is currently available for each bird. Close the call window; return to table.
- The last column gives you the summary local status *** of the WEHE– “Breeding resident with some altitudinal migration taking place.” From this I deduce that the WEHE is not rare, so no need to get excited on that score. (Unlike if I’d seen the nearby White-fronted HE - “Very rare vagrant; first record for ACT Jun 2007.”)
BIRD DATA - The Data link is last to be mentioned because it leads to a massive set of information that should be a first port of call for anyone wanting to understand the movements, distribution, trends, breeding timing or rarity of any local species.
- Click Data link for the WEHE. A new window will open showing a single page in pdf format.
- From the distribution map I see that WEHEs are obviously very much at home in the area where mine were seen, in fact they seem to congregrate all the way along the Yass River Valley.
- From the top right graph I see that they are observed more in Winter, but still a fair number in summer. <Thinks - This might only be because they are quieter in summer when breeding?>.
- From the second graph I see that WEHE’s have been very consistently present over the years, apart from a larger number recorded during the late 80’s – which is suspiciously likely to be related to the fact that the COG Atlas surveys occurred then.
- The third graph shows me that there have not been many breeding records in the last few years, though I’m unable to determine from this how few.
- Fourth shows that nesting in January seems not unusual, though we can’t tell from this how many records have contributed to the elements of this breeding timing chart.
- All in all, there’s a lot of info to be learned from this page, however I still don’t yet know whether my breeding record is unusual. For knock-your-socks-off quantities of extra information, click on the insignificant blue button More Detail at the top of this page. After a bit of download delay you now have a dozen or so pages of more detail about the White-eared Honeyeater around Canberra than you could ever want.
- The first page shows four seasonal distribution maps – it’s a bit hard to make out but they are Spring, Summer, Winter, Autumn in normal reading order, I suspect so as to make a cyclical order if read clockwise. I have to zoom in to read some of this information but that’s easy enough.
- Without going through it all, there’s lots to look through here, some more useful than others. I’m still looking for breeding record detail … and …at the bottom of page 6, I find the actual numbers of observations that made up the seasonal chart mentioned earlier. At the top of page 7, I see that there has been only one breeding record each year for the last three years, and all three are dependent young or carrying food, no actual nests - so it looks as though my observation is not common. From the second chart and lower down I see that functional nests have only been observed three times in the last 20 years, so am convinced it is worth submitting an Incidental Record.
- (Further down on these pages is more detail on trends and other statistics etc etc)
SUBMITTING AN INCIDENTAL RECORD - Having decided I want to submit an Incidental Record, the easiest way is using the online form -- go back to any main website page and on the top menu, hover over Observing and Reporting Birds. On the drop down menu that appears, click Submit COG Incidental Record.
OR – click on the Submit Incidental Record shortcut button on the home page (top right). - There’s a few notes above the green form that are worth reading.
- It is important that your browser is able to access location data from your machine so that the map will appear, and roughly at the right place (Canberra). Mostly this occurs by default but sometimes you might see a dialog box asking for permission for Jotform to access location information, or similar. Click ‘yes’ or ‘do this always from now on’ etc to ensure you can see the location map on the form. If you can’t see this map, please get in touch with me as you might need to change a couple of settings.
- Filling out the form is very simple, no tricks apart perhaps from using the map to send the latitude and longitude of your sighting. You enter name, email, the location, date and time, the species and best estimate of the number seen. Optionally, enter a COG observer code, any pertinent notes, and any breeding activity.
- For location, the map is easy to use – please read the instructions to the left of the map. If you have a gps with you, you can choose to enter coordinates directly instead of using the map. Or if the map really isn’t working for you, you can select to just enter an accurate street address or description in the Describe location box.
- Click Submit. You will be taken to a thank you screen, and later will receive an email with a copy of what you entered, for safekeeping.
If any of above is confusing or doesn’t work as it should, please don’t hesitate to email me. Most issues are very easily sorted out. Julian FOOTNOTES * The photo gallery and the bird info page are soon to be updated. The photos in particular are a nightmare to maintain and update under the current system, and they don’t work at all with search engines, so a new content management system will be installed for the gallery. After this is in place, we will replace and update ALL the photos in the gallery. This will result in a significantly more beautiful and useful gallery by using the significantly more beautiful and useful photos that our members have been taking in the last four or five years. More plumage variations, ages, poses, behavioural shots. ** The Groups that are used to gather similar birds in the Bird Info table (and gallery) are not official taxonomic families, but similar in intent. They are just to allow browsing of related birds in one go. *** The birds on the Bird Info list include all those that have been seen in the COG area of interest. The list is the same as COG's ANNOTATED CHECKLIST OF THE BIRDS OF THE ACT, which is also the source of the Status in the ACT information. The Bird Info table currently is based on the old list (which was replaced this month). The table will be updated to match the new list at the same time as the photo gallery is updated. (There are more birds in the new list, and the Status information has been updated.)
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