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Cocos & Christmas Island Rarities

To: Dave Torr <>
Subject: Cocos & Christmas Island Rarities
From: Carl Clifford <>
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2011 13:55:56 +1100
I have just had a play around with my recording application, BirdBrain and it let me set up Cocos Is. as a country, so perhaps others will let you do the same.

Carl Clifford

On 09/01/2011, at 1:31 PM, Dave Torr wrote:

Of course - but the ones I have seen then aggregate the divisions into a country so you still end up with CI in your Aus list - sure you get a CI list but if you do not want CI birds counted as Australian how would you configure the software?

On 9 January 2011 13:23, Carl Clifford <> wrote:
Dave,

Most, if not all birding software allow you to create state or county lists, so if the software allows you to add C&C as states, you can do C7C as a state list, otherwise you can just create a county called Cocos or Christmas Island and make your list from there.

Carl Clifford



On 09/01/2011, at 1:14 PM, Dave Torr wrote:

Depends on the software - the ones I looked at (some time ago I must admit) did not allow for the creation of new "countries" - which is what I guess you would have to call it - because if you said it was a territiory of Aus then it would add the birds to your Aus list. Of course I haven't looked at all birding software (and I ended up writing my own which does use political boundaries) - I would be interested to know if any commercially available software allows you to create a CI list and NOT have the birds added to your
Aussie list!

On 9 January 2011 13:06, david taylor <> wrote:

Pretty easy Dave re recording - you create a list - Birds of Christmas
island!


On 09/01/2011, at 12:02 PM, Dave Torr wrote:

I guess since the "official" list (whatever that means!) is C&B plus BARC (and let us not re-open that discussion!) and they count these territories then it is reasonable for Aussie birders to count the birds. And since most
birding software that I have seen is based on country lists if you go to
Christmas and do not deem it to be part of Australia how do you record the
sightings?

For better or worse the definitions of countries and territories are fairly static (and the questionable boundaries are usually not ones that birders would to choose to visit) whereas I have seen various definitions of faunal regions and so we could then perhaps start a debate on which definition of
faunal regions we should use (please - no!) - and then I guess one gets
vagrants to a faunal region as well from the next region and people would go
to the boundaries of a region in the hope of vagrants :-)

On 9 January 2011 12:56, david taylor <>wrote:

Another who agrees - I would love to bird Christmas Island and the Cocos
Islands but this recent notion that they are part of the Australian bird
list is in my opinion flawed - they may be Australian Territories but are
vast distances from Australia,  Surley just because they are Australian
territories does not make them Australian birds?

I pose the scenario that if next year a country in South America became an Australian Territory that some of our twitchers would be adding Toucans to
the Australian list - this may seem silly but in reality what is the
difference in the two scenarios. I struggle too see how distance can form the basis of the argument? Cocos islands are 3600 kms due west of Darwin. Darwin to Thailand is less distance - if it became a territory would we be
adding all of their birds?

I would be interested to hear the attitude of those who do believe these
birds are valid on the Australian list because they are Australian
Territories and if so what would be the difference if indeed we gained a new
territory in a place like Sth America or Asia?

And as Tom points out - do the French birders add New Caledonia birds
because its a territory of theirs?

Seems its great sport for our twitchers (and absolutely nothing wrong with that) - but a long bow for mine that they form part of the Australian bird
list.

But each to his own and great birding all.

cheers

David Taylor



On 09/01/2011, at 10:32 AM, Carl Clifford wrote:

Tom,

I heartily agree. You could almost say that birding on Christmas and
Cocos was SE Asian birding for xenophobes, except for the fact that the
population of Cocos is mainly Malay and the population of Christmas is
mainly Middle Eastern, albeit they are banged-up in a concentration camp

Cheers,

Carl Clifford


On 09/01/2011, at 7:38 AM, Tom Tarrant wrote:

Hi Frank,

I think you are missing the point regarding that comment, as exciting as
Christmas and Cocos sound (I would love to go birding there!) they are
not
in the same faunal zone as Australia so many birders don't see the
relevance. You may as well go New Caledonia and add those species to
your
'French' list.

Tom



And I remember there was a comment about the possible Short-toed Eagle
in
Victoria being better than the rarities reported on Cocos and Christmas
in
December.  Sorry.  Not even close!!!  I saw 11 new birds for my
Australian
list, and I dipped on two.  Even Mike Carter added 9 birds to his
Australian
list.


--
********************************
Tom Tarrant
Kobble Creek, Qld

http://kobble.aviceda.org

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/aviceda/
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