Steve & others,
I have had some involvement helping Cheryl Gole (the WA coordinator) to
vet the bird records for WA. We get quite a lot of Yellow Thornbill for
Yellow-rumped, Spotted Bowerbird for Western Bowerbird, Yellow Wattlebird
for Red Wattlebird, Yellow-throated Honeyeater for Yellow-throated Miner,
etc. We pick most of these up, but some slip through.
My understanding is that Melbourne sends over a list of 'unusuals' every
quarter or so to Cheryl which are then followed up. I don't know how Rory
(or whoever) creates this list.
I also understand that the atlassing is planned to stop early in 2001
(i.e. after 3.5 years) and that the last 6 months will be used to get the
final records in (we are still getting records from 9 months ago) and to
thoroughly vet the records for each species to clear up these sorts of
inconsistencies.
So what can you do?
1. Volunteer to vet the records. One half day a month is a great help to
the regional organisers. You don't have to be an expert. 90% of forms
only have very common birds. Less than 1% have species worth an URRF.
These you can pass on the RO to follow up.
2. Send your records in ASAP, so that any queries can be followed up
quickly. It is very hard to send an URRF to someone for a record from 9
months ago.
3. Double check your forms. Even the very best make typos. And double
check your lats / longs as these sometimes slip through also. There is a
big difference between E118 and E128, or S22 and S32 etc!!
So don't be discouraged by these abnormal sightings. I am certain that
they will all be picked up by the time that the final report is created.
All the best & keep those Atlas forms coming in.
Frank
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tomorrow, Sunday. The enormity of the task defies description, but
there is a plan in place, and provided every component works, the
birds will start leaving for the Eastern Cape by late morning. The
number of birds to be moved might be as large as 40 000 (forty
thousand). This might be largest evacuation of animals since the
flooding of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River.
While we were ringing, teams of volunteers were making up
penguin boxes in preparation for the evacuation, while others were
collecting oiled penguins off the shoreline of the island. I didn't
write down the number of oiled birds collected today; it was about
500 by lunch time.
The second SAP penguin will have its satellite tag fitted at
Yzerfontein sometime tomorrow during a media briefing. We hope to
start getting position fixes on the first penguin from Monday.
Meanwhile, find your way to the SAPmap on the website. Rene Navarro
at the ADU will update the map each time we get new position fixes
from France.
Rob Crawford was on Robben Island today. He tells me that there a
still both oiled and clean birds there. Clean birds were sent to
MCM's research aquarium in Sea Point and will leave for Port
Elizabeth either tonight or tomorrow. Oiled birds, as usual, went to
SANCCOB. The operation there will continue tomorrow --- but the main
fixture will be at Dassen Island.
Les
****************************
Professor Les Underhill
Director: Avian Demography Unit
Department of Statistical Sciences
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7701 South Africa
Phone +27 21 650 3227 Fax +27 21 650 3434
Web http://www.uct.ac.za/depts/stats/adu/
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
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