Dave, I think that's pretty incredible! It's a pity people's records
are fragmented across several databases, but with something like this,
at least you know which one to look in to get a list. An initial look
shows it to be a good way to see what sites are around an area you
intend to visit, although I suspect a lot of the coordinates in the
databases are approximate.
One problem with trying to aggregate data from several databases might
be that some people may have entered the same data in several of them,
making some species appear more common than they are.
One thing I don't understand is how these databases relate to the Birds
Australia Atlas database. As a member I can get a list out of it for
any 10' cell. But that won't tell me what has been seen at one of the
black dots I can see in the cell, and it isn't easy to be sure just
where those black dots are on the ground anyway. For that I need to pay
$88. I can understand that this data is probably vetted more carefully
and is therefore worth more, but is it really worth that much?
It seems like we're running two parallel systems - one that supplies
free but possibly dodgy data, and another that supplies presumably
precise but expensive data. I may have this all wrong - I know
virtually nothing about the Atlas, and only recently thought to look at
it for information. But it seems like a lot of duplicated effort.
Peter Shute
wrote on Wednesday, 11 July 2007 9:24
PM:
> Would indeed be great. I have been working for some time on a
> site www.birdingsites.com.au which attempts to solve some of
> these issues - with the cooperation of both Martyn (from
> Bridpedia) and Richard (from Eremaea) there is a graphical
> representation of all of the locations that they have records
> for. There are many issues to overcome - both organisations
> have records for some sites and it is not easy to reconcile
> the two - and to date I have not tried very hard to interest
> BA in collaborating, but it may be the start. If you look at
> "Where to Bird" and select "Western Treatment Plant,
> Werribee" you can access lists from Eremaea, Bridpedia and my
> own records - although not alas in a single screen yet. You
> can also see all of the Eremeae and Birdpedia sites (all 10,000 or so
> of them)
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