I
thought there was only one clash of 4 letter codes in our area. Under normal
rules, BRTB would be for Brown & Buff rumped Thornbill. This and all other
clashes have been resolved Australia wide, as far as I was aware, by choosing a
slight change to the rules for one of the affected species. I believe one is
BUTB but I have forgotten. another e.g. is Grey Falcon & Grey Fantail would
both be GRFA, so I think the former is GYFA. Certainly the GBS database includes
all of the 4 letter codes for local species and there are no clashes. Although
they are not actually used for anything. Or that was the case before. All
manipulation is done on the code (Atlas) number:
Then
again, these codes only work if they are known & understood by all. Without
using them (and they aren't much here), they won't be understood, so are rather
pointless. It appears from my reading of a similar chatline in California, that
in the USA, they use their 4 letter codes based on the same system, routinely,
and they are fully understood. I am not aware of any 6 letter code of bird
names, you are suggesting there is one, which is curious. That would seem too
difficult to remember...... and certainly not any 3 letter ones, that would
be too hard to arrange........ I'm not sure if Geoffrey was actively presenting
a code system or just a one-off abbreviation when the meaning was obvious.
Philip
I counted 91 there on Tuesday 3 Feb, and submitted that
obs to Eremaea eBird - David
PS I am not aware of any generally-accepted
three letter bird name code system. Better to stick with the standard six letter
codes - the four letter codes don't work well in our area, too many
clashes.
On 7/02/2015 12:41 PM, Geoffrey Dabb wrote:
Getting a little
ahead of the week’s story here but coming back yesterday, unaware of recent
messages about PWD counts, I paused at the Trucking Lane farmdam and
snapped the flock in sections with a 300mm lens. Later I made non-overlapping
sections and marked in red all the ducks that were NOT PWDs, the PWDs being
each given a white dot. My count is 89. Of course there
might be more or less at any given time. Before I snapped them I had
flushed a small group from the road side which joined the flock on the far
side.
