birding-aus

WA Sightings

To: Dave Torr <>
Subject: WA Sightings
From: Paul Dodd <>
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 20:28:19 +1100
Dave et al,

Surely the solution is to allow people to record their sightings using any system they like but to have some form of data interchange standard - especially to the BA Atlas. Data exchange - another hobby- horse of mine...

Before we move too far off track, the discusion was originally about notifications... Ie Birdlines vs other systems - rather than record keeping and atlasing. I consider these to be distinct. On reading Frank's response the other day, the issue is more about moderation - WHO rather than HOW. I suspect that if someone else in WA was willing to assist with moderation, WA would happily use Birdline. That just leaves SA and ACT.

Paul



Sent from my iPhone

On 05/01/2010, at 8:02 PM, Dave Torr <> wrote:

I am sure that it will be able to do everything - but unless a significant proportion of birders can be persuaded to move from the systems they use now it is likely to end up as just another place that has a few % of records. Obviously in the long run people will use whatever systems work the best and neither I nor BA nor BOCA nor anyone else on this list can tell people what
to use, and there will always be new ones coming along, but the more
fragmented the collection of data becomes the less useful it is both for normal birders and for scientists. I personally would much rather have one place to look to find data than many places, especially as tools like Google cannot extract data readily from such databases (yet!). To a certain extent bird-o and the new BOCA website will solve some of these problems, but the more systems that are in use the harder it becomes for anyone to get an
overall picture of what is happening.

2010/1/5 Nigel Jackett <>

Hi Dave,

eBird will be able to do almost everything you desire, and is expected to
cover Australia this year. Also, it is already apparently the largest
wildlife database in existence, and much of the data contributed by birders is used by scientists for research and conservation purposes. It also it fantastic for keeping lists. You may want to check out these examples to see
for yourself what it's capable of:

http://www.ebird.org - Homepage of eBird
http://www.ebird.org/content/newzealand - New Zealand eBird example, for
some reasaon it's already made it there and not here!

Cheers,

Nigel

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Dave Torr <> wrote:

OK - a stab at what I would like to see - but as I don't run any of the
systems then it is not up to me!

A national birding discussion group - Birding-Aus is clearly the only real
candidate for that
Both national and state birdlines - here is where we get into middy waters as Eremaea does a good job in the 6 or so state/areas that it covers but
is
lacking in some places. But the Eremaea national birdline seems to get little traffic, as people report national rarities more on Birding- Aus. Would be nice in my humble opinion if all rare sightings went to Eremaea rather then Birding-Aus and the relevant moderators decided whether to
escalate to the National one.
And finally a recording database of which the Atlas is the only serious contender - again I would love it if Eremaea and Birdpedia moved out of
this
area - but I do think there needs to be more consensus as to what is
really
needed in this area. As I said - subspecies to me are essential. Many birders (like myself) want to keep all of their lists in one place and whilst the Atlas is great for formal surveys it is less good for "birds I saw whilst driving from Melbourne to Canberra" - which are still valid for
my personal year list but not much good for scientists.
Finally I wonder about the long term future of any site that is maintained and run essentially by one person. In the short history of the internet
many
websites have come and gone. It is I guess my experience that individuals are much more likely to have good ideas and implement them quickly than organisations, but that organisations (such as BA and BOCA) are much more likely to be around in some form or other running whatever passes for a website in 50 years time than the excellent sites that today's dedicated individuals run. So how does one harness the dedication and drive of the
few
dedicated enthusiasts behind Birding-Aus, Eremaea, Birdpedia and others whilst at the same time trying to ensure that their data will be still available to researchers in 50 years time when unfortunately some of the individuals behind these sites may no longer be as active as they are now!

2010/1/5 michael norris <>

Hi Dave

But what are the objectives of all these reporting/recording systems?

It would be great if you and other people managing them were to set up a private blog or similar to work for greater clarity on what each of you
is
trying to achieve.

For instance, Birdline Vic (on Eremaea) is ".....a site for the
reporting
of rare or unusual birds outside their normal range, unusually high or
low
numbers, early or late arrivals or departures for migrant species and
interesting behaviour or unusual habitat usage.'

So it's like the lists (also moderated and also unauthenticated) printed
in
the Bird Observer.

Quite different from the Atlas which, to my mind, should be regarded as
the
authoritative archive for monitoring bird distributions (and sites). It also needs to be resourced properly (pay per view?), in the same way
that
Simon Mustoe proposes an "instant" rarity reporting system would need to
be
funded.

Michael Norris




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