http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=554556
Website helps birdwatchers follow migrants' epic journeys
By Brian Unwin
24 August 2004
Think of it as the world's biggest birdwatching notebook. It seems
fantastic, but the internet is making it a reality, and it has been
launched at the hobby's jamboree, the British Birdwatching Fair at
Rutland Water.
BirdTrack is a database where any birdwatcher in Britain or Ireland can
store their personal records daily, and watch them feed into a giant
picture of birds coming and going, and stopping and nesting, across the
British Isles.
Thousands of people are expected to respond, says the British Trust for
Ornithology (BTO), the leading national bird research organisation,
which is setting up BirdTrack with the Royal Society for the Protection
of Birds (RSPB) and Birdwatch Ireland, the Republic's main bird group.
BirdTrack is a year-round extension to Migration Watch, a hugely
successful BTO database. For the past two years, it has provided a
vivid online picture of the miracle of spring bird migration, when
millions of summer visitors from cuckoos to chiffchaffs pour into
Britain from their winter quarters in Africa.
Migration Watch has made the process visible, with animated maps of
bird arrivals updating daily and weekly, based on the sightings of
thousands of observers recorded via its website. Anyone can log on to
it whenever they like.
BirdTrack will continue to show spring migration, but it will also show
species leaving for the winter, and winter visitors such as fieldfares
and redwings from Scandinavia which head north when spring comes.
Britain has the world's biggest concentration of birdwatchers - the
RSPB has more than a million members - so with more people having
internet access the participation potential is huge.
The data will be used to support species and site conservation efforts,
and to provide more insight into the status of scarce species.
"This will benefit both birds and birdwatchers," said Dawn Balmer, the
BTO scientist in charge of the project. "Thousands of people are
birdwatching every day but what they have seen has not got through to
organisations working on species and site conservation."
To take part, visit the BirdTrack website www.birdtrack.net to register
free. Birders already in Migration Watch can use the same user name and
password. Queries can be e-mailed to
--------------------------------------------
Birding-Aus is now on the Web at
www.birding-aus.org
--------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message 'unsubscribe
birding-aus' (no quotes, no Subject line)
to
|
