birding-aus

Re: Victorian Twitchathon 05

To:
Subject: Re: Victorian Twitchathon 05
From: "Tony Crittenden" <>
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 01:36:57 +0000
Birdo's

In the UK they run a national bird race with teams limited to county boundaries There it is scored on the percentage seen of the highest tally for your county

Obviously counties like Norfolk (Coastal less urbanised) have a much higher tally than say Northamptonshire (landlocked more urbanised), but as you are judged against the best tally in your county it seems pretty fair. So a sparrow in Norfolk may be worth 0.75% but in northampton its worth 1.2%

Cheers
tony

(former Northampton birdracer)





From: 
Reply-To: 
To: 
Subject: [BIRDING-AUS] Re: Victorian Twitchathon 05
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:42:54 +1100

It's obviously very quiet out there on the birding front.

I think I recall discussions in past years about this with suggestions
that you open it up as a national event.

I like the "Modified Dolby System".  Because I only have the past five
years totals for NSW (although I do prefer the 10 year average model) I've
used the average of the past 5 years winning totals for both states.  The
7 year Twitchers (Vic) would have scored 96.7 while WOW (NSW) would have
scored 105.4.  The Brewers (NSW) would come out at 104.5.

Obviously you are not going to please everyone.  There are clearly
inequities that probably can't be addressed.  The Victorians are limited
by state borders for example.  If we dropped border restrictions would the
Victorian teams change their routes?  Others may cry foul that FNQ teams
(for example) may have a greater diversity of birds within easy travelling
distance.  I don't think it's possible to create a level playing field
here.  There's already some apparent discontent in NSW (I've only heard
second-hand) about some teams taking it all too seriously.  This is
interesting as the teams that they must be referring to probably have the
most irreverent attitude to the event of any of the teams (WOW don't even
do a recce of sites before the Saturday of the event!).  The same teams
(although I can really only speak for certainly about WOW) also raise
significant amounts of money.

I think it would be interesting to open it up (only because I like a
challenge) but not sure how it could be done while keeping enough teams
happy to ensure that it remained an important find raising event.

Cheers

David Geering
Regent Honeyeater Recovery Coordinator
Department of Environment & Conservation
P.O. Box 2111
Dubbo  NSW  2830
Ph: 02 6883 5335 or Freecall 1800 621 056
Fax: 02 6884 9382



This email is intended for the addressee(s) named and may contain confidential and/or privileged information.

If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender and then delete it immediately. Any views expressed in this email are those of the individual sender except where the sender expressly and with authority states them to be the views of the Department of Environment and Conservation (NSW).



--------------------------------------------
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message:
'unsubscribe birding-aus' (no quotes, no Subject line)
to 

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the birding-aus mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU