Dear Birding Ausers
After many delays my annotated and fully referenced checklists for 400 islands
in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, and the
Melanesian Islands of Indonesia is now up and running. The referencing is for
the sourcing of the information so you can see the date and name of the
observer or author and judge for yourself the reliability of the data. This
information will also be useful for determining trends in bird populations.
The annotations are for ecological behaviour & environment preferences, which
can both help find the birds and determine how much of their habitat remains.
It also helps to know what time of the year to expect those that migrate.
These data sets were developed for my students who come from many of these
islands and who have sometimes been able to contribute useful information for
these lists. I have felt that students who take the Ornithology paper we offer
for both Education and BSc students need not only to learn something about
their own birds but to be encouraged to start doing their own research in their
own backyards. This project was started to encourage just that.
It can be found at http://www.birdsofmelanesia.net
Hopefully this home page will reduce the number of people looking around
blindly for such lists.
I am heading into some apparently ornithologically unvisited (or at least
unrecorded) islands in the Solomons in December and so hope to add to the
lists. If you have some data that would add value to these lists feel welcome
to share them with me to place on this site.
Happy birding in the South Pacific
Mike
Dr Mike Tarburton
Dean: School of Science and Technology
Pacific Adventist University
PMB, Boroko
Papua New Guinea
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