Thanks for the quick reply with a graph..... Yes of course David’s opening comment is correct. Fortunately now we have a wider range of data available also.
Even so, those old style monthly GBS abundance graphs were a big part of the ABR and now have completely disappeared for many years. They were a huge part of the inspiration of The GBS report in seeing the data as a source of recurring monthly trends. Henry
Nix, who basically inspired the GBS, told me he even had intended the data to be used on a weekly, rather than monthly basis! Even so, the monthly graphs as in those early ABR were a piece of superb inspiration by someone (not me) early on and done with a
lot of work by McComas Taylor and later me. I know as I produced and edited the things for several years, so I know how difficult these were to do and in those days they were printed separately with sometimes weird labels of species names that might change
from year to year and they were cut out individually and glued into the page after manually creating a gap for the space. That was 1980s technology.
About the bird, good to see that the trend still exists. Of course most graphed GBS data is on abundance, not reporting rate. A graph that shows abundance data
will show a much greater illustration of the same point than a graph that shows reporting rate. The addition of another year (“and published in a couple of months time”)
will be imperceptible change on what it is now. Which is why I think graphs in an ABR should be graphs for the current year. There is little point in having them for all years. It is a waste of space. Although that graph does show red line results for the
one year......
Philip
From: David McDonald (personal)
[
Sent: Saturday, 18 February, 2017 3:12 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Hobbies in Giralang
The Annual Bird Report cannot present all the available data.
For the monthly data, and lots more, please visit
http://canberrabirds.org.au/birds/, find the species of interest, click on the graph icon in the right hand column ('PDF data sheet'), then click on 'More detail' in blue at the top.
Page 2 of the PDF shows 'Reporting Rate by year (ending 30 June) , month and season', including this:
These data will be updated after the 2015-16 ABR is completed and published in a couple of months time. Many thanks to Steve Wallace and Jaron Bailey for their great work in making the data available to us in this form.
Yup, Feb is the stand-out month for the Canberra region hobbies.
David
On 18/02/2017 12:16 PM, Philip Veerman wrote:
This is expected. This is the time that young have left the nest and they tend to be noisy. As I have written many times, the Australian Hobby features as
a sort of highlight (if you are interested) in Canberra in February. That is the main reason why I chose them as the front cover bird for The GBS Report (also because I just happened to have a painting I did of one, some years earlier, that would make a nice
bit of artwork of mine to put on the cover). Indeed this was first described by me in 1991:
(1991) ‘The monthly pattern of records of the Australian Hobby
Falco longipennis in Canberra, A.C.T.’, Australian Bird Watcher 14: 70–72. (Analysis of a species whose annual routine is very consistent.)
It appears though that the consistency of the pattern has reduced a bit. But hard to know as the COG ABR no longer contain the monthly abundance graphs that were so useful in the early years. Once
again highlights the need to redo and update The GBS Report.
Philip
From: Woo O'Reilly
Sent: Saturday, 18 February, 2017 12:43 AM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Hobbies in Giralang
I'm pretty sure I had two Australian Hobbies fly over my place at Giralang this afternoon. Gliding low. I seem to recall Duncan spotting them at Giralang Pond some time back?
