Keith is an academic at Queen’s University Belfast, living in Kircubbin on the Ards peninsula, Northern Ireland. His research and teaching focus on ecological and evolutionary responses of organisms to the climate changes of the ice ages (the last couple of million years). He enjoys watching birds anywhere, any time, from the first bird he remembers seeing (a redwing in the garden hedge one winter in the 1960s), to his most recent lifer (zebra dove last month in the Philippines).
For bird reporting in Britain and Ireland, Birdtrack is pretty much the only game in town, apart from the commercial rare bird news outlets. Being managed by BTO, it focuses on a particular approach to data, preferring lists “we would like you to keep a list of all the species you see and hear each time you go out birdwatching”, and there are reasons for doing that if one is going to monitor certain types of population changes. But this approach does not lend itself well either to user-friendliness, or to collection of larger amounts of data.
I lived in Sweden for eight years, and was among the first users of their bird-reporting system, Svalan (the swallow), introduced in 2000. From the beginning, this was focussed at individual birders, with a range of tools for ease of input, from single records to whole lists. The reporter decides what should be reported, and the database is therefore heterogenous. The philosophy, however, is to increase reporting and improve its quality. Reporting increases through publication, and quality increases because the reports are available for all, instantly.
And it works. In 2011 (the latest year for which I could find Birdtrack statistics), Svalan had 2.9 million records reported. Birdtrack had 2.2 million (data from Birdtrack News no. 1). And this from a Swedish population of 9.5 million, compared to the UK plus Ireland 70 million. If the birding proportion is similar, the UK/Ireland figure should be nearly 15 million records annually. A shortfall of 30,000 per day averaged over the whole year. And it is not just Sweden that can do this: the Norwegian implementation of Svalan received 0.8 million records in 2011 from a population of 5 million (equivalent to 11 million records annually in UK and Ireland). Certainly, there would be technical problems with handling data in this volume, but better that problem than not having the data.
Why is the Swedish system so successful?
First, all the individual records are visible, identified to observers, and can be accurately located on maps. This vast database is searchable by locality, region, species, data or period, and results returned as lists, tables, maps. Svalan maintains lists of birders sorted by number of species reported nationally, regionally, annually, enabling birders to see how their reporting compares with others at whatever scale they choose.
Second, this is a very powerful bird-finding tool. The commercial outlets are excellent for helping birders pin down the rarities, but most birders are more interested in finding sub-rarities nearer to home. If I am trying to find the flock of winter geese that contains a single bean goose, I would like records that describe exactly which field at what times, not a 1km square or larger unit. I would like records of singing reed warblers that tell me which part of the reed bed. And I expect these things in real time.
Third, Svalan is integrated with national and regional report committees. Whereas Birdtrack exports records to the county recorders, the Swedish report committees work directly on Svalan. A report to Svalan is considered explicitly as a report to these committees. The system thus enables the tracking of rarities, and tracking of trends of commoner species. It is also used nationally and regionally for the generation of atlases, and these are visible on the website as they develop.
Fourth, it provides a platform for all manner of specific surveys. For example, the Swedish equivalent of the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch is run through Svalan, and Svalan takes a feed from Club300 (the Swedish rare bird alert system). All data are welcome, whether garden blue tits or vagrant eagles. No transferring of data, no double entry, no consequent errors, which contributes to quality.
There were many critics of Svalan when it started. People complained about the risk of low data quality, above all. Some were nervous of having their names published with records. It settled down in only a few years, and life without Svalan is now unthinkable in Sweden, and also in other Scandinavian countries with similar systems. The data quality issue resolves itself through the instant scrutiny of records, and the overwhelming mass of reliable data when everyone uses it. The approach adopted has now been extended to vascular plants (2003), fungi (2007), terrestrial (2003) and limnic (2006) invertebrates, other vertebrates (2007) and marine invertebrates (2007).
If any of this convinces you to try yourself … the link is: http://www.artportalen.se/birds
Current observations can be accessed from “Todays Birds” (then change the language again). The default view is filtered by rarity criteria. Click on the tab for filters at the top to change to “Display all”, which will very nicely reveal the full power of what is in there.
Click on flag in top right to change language. Use ‘Show Records’ to start searching. When you have set up search terms, use ‘Present records’ to determine whether you want a table, map, histogram, excel, ….
And similarly for Norway: http://artsobservasjoner.no/fugler/
And an example. In his blog on 1 Jan, Mark proudly (and why not?) wrote about a merlin he saw on his local patch. The first two screen grabs show show what I can get out of Birdtrack about it.
The next three something similar from Svalan for Uppland (nearest Swedish equivalent to the East Midlands).
Notice first the richness of the Swedish data. Then (this isn’t live in a screen grab, but you can see it if you search yourself), many of the key pieces of data are clickable. Best example for this is the table with sightings detailed by row. Along each sighting row, the locality name is clickable (goes to more info on the site), the clock symbol displays the time when the cursor hovers over it, and the info symbol, if blue, gives more details about the observation, sometimes at length, when the cursor is placed over it. And the name of the observer is there – which is a key element: people really like seeing their names on the web, and it draws in the sightings. Wouldn’t you like to see a table like this for merlins in Northants? With the facility to drill down to exactly what the observer submitted? And what else was at the same locality?
When will we get a really good bird reporting system for these islands, instead of the barely mediocre system we now have? Sweden did it 13 years ago. I spend a lot of time (not to mention the hard-earned) birding, always, it seems, in wind and rain. I am perfectly happy to share those records with others who do likewise, and help them to find the birds that interest them, just as I would like to see their records to help me. About 20,000 Svalan records are mine. If this reporting helps monitor bird populations, even better. But I am not going to spend time with a complex and awkward reporting system, only to see my records disappear into a black hole, reappearing only smeared through time and space into crude graphs and maps. Despite being visible in every last detail to those at BTO, these records are largely invisible to other birders. Engaging with birders in a way that encourages mass reporting is needed to really untap the potential volume of records if we are serious about monitoring the birds (common and rare) here. And we are serious, aren’t we? It will take a concerted, co-ordinated effort of the voluntary organisations, commercial outlets and, dare I say it, government. There is a message in the missing 30,000 records for each and every day: it is not just me who is not reporting.
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A fascinating and thought-provoking blog, thank you.
I would have preferred some info on your work on climate change from the last ice age. Especially as you can now read ‘Feral’ by George Monbiot. An amazing eye opening book. May be next time!
Great blog Keith. However, I am not sure I agree with the logic of not submitting records to a system because it is sub-optimal compared with another system. This is like saying that wind turbines are not very efficient so we should not build them until something better comes along. Seriously though (now I have wound up some readers of this blog), you mentioned Big Garden Bird Watch and this is a good case in point. I spent two years covering the e-feedback from BGBW and I am well aware of its drawbacks but the biggest problem is that people will not submit negative records. I cannot help thinking that any system is prone to this limitation and knowing the mindset of people in the UK, if they have their names attached to records, would they really want to admit to negative records? From a conservation standpoint, negative records are much more important than positive records, as I found out when trying to pour over the house sparrow records for Bolton* as a volunteer at Lancashire Wildlife Trust. I am not saying we should ignore the Swedish model and assume Birdtrack works for the UK but equally I am not so sure it is a good idea to give the impression that the latter system is worthless either.
*For the record, I almost certainly spotted a trend for part of the town with an attendant explanation but some lost datasets stopped me from progressing with the analysis despite having BTO records for comparison.
You should try iRecord, a system similar to Svalan, but perhaps more sophisticated and it caters for all wildlife, not just birds. It easily covers all of your wishes. It’s produced by the Biological Records Centre at CEH and is based on freely available Open Source software, so can be developed collaboratively. It is the result of several years of concerted effort by many organisations in the UK (such as the NBN and Local Record Centres) and Europe, and yet it is still relatively new.
One crucial point: data entered onto the system can be viewed and reported on not only by you, the user, but also by other users. Once data is in, it can be easily downloaded by Local Record Centres to be used, among many other things, by local government in the planning process. Data on the system is also inspected and verified by experts and, once checked, the data automatically goes up to the NBN Gateway and eventually on to GBIF. How about that for data flow and ensuring visibility?
It’s worth browsing through the manual to get a good feel for it:
http://irecord-training.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
It’s also worth noting that customised forms for particular purposes or species groups can be easily set up:
http://irecord-training.readthedocs.org/en/latest/forms-library.html
Even smartphone apps can plug-in to to it, like the brand new UK Ladybird Survey app:
http://cehsciencenews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/a-revolution-in-ladybird-recording.html
Mark, one of your favoured quotes if I recall correctly is; The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing (Edmund Burke).
How does it stack up if like Keith you ‘do nothing’ and go on to publicly revel in it!
My first thought is there is clearly different demographics in Sweden as opposed to the UK and any lack of Birdtrack uptake is a poor reflection on our birders! Not a celebration of the Swedish recording system!
An odd and as far as I can see negative blog post.
Yours,
Jonny
To be fair to Keith, there is nothing here to indicate that he is doing nothing he’s just not doing one particular thing for reasons that he has given. It would be more than harsh to attribute the current state of play in the ‘good versus evil’ struggle to Keith’s inaction!
I know Birdtrack has been going for years, but with it now being so easy to use on iPhones and Android devices surely it would be pertinent to see how the data compares in a year or so. There has been a huge explosion in sightings submitted this year, simply because it so much easier to do it now.
The other beauty of Birdtrack is that it can be used from beginner bird watchers right up to dedicated “twitchers”. Masses of data may alienate the more casual spotter. I for one love the stats it produces and would love a more in depth analysis of them, but I know that wouldn’t be for everyone.
It’s early days for Birdtrack Mk 2.0 and I can only see the service evolving organically as the data volumes go up.
Great blog, and a fascinating read.
Ant.
Have to agree with Jonny, a very negative blog.
Poor show from the author too for not submitting records.
Although it is a fascinating read its also rather disingenuous blog of what is a developing system. Given the speed of recent BirdTrack developments from the android/iphone apps, “Explore My Records”, new home page, through to the MOU with eBird its quiet exciting to think where this system will be in the next year or so.
Personally I view BirdTrack as a way of managing my records – someone else has developed a pretty easy to use on line database, which allows me to enter a lot of detail, and keeps my records safe. And I can view/download them from pretty much any computer I like. Yes there are improvements that could be made but those will come with time – and funding.
I also think Keith’s opening gambit of “For bird reporting in Britain and Ireland, Birdtrack is pretty much the only game in town, apart from the commercial rare bird news outlets.” is misleading or at least depends on what he means by bird reporting. On a UK scale, yes he potentially correct but on the local or regional scale he is way of the mark. For example here in South Wales there are several blogs; facebook pages; twitter accounts; not to mention local clubs all providing sightings information. But I see more sightings being reported by more individuals on BirdTrack than the above and as a result I’ve found out more gen on what’s being seen in the local area by perusing that outlet than any of the rest. There is also a lot of anonymous posters on BirdTrack suggesting that actually a lot of people don’t want to see their name associated with records.
As Ian Peters has alluded to, there irony to this blog and Kieth’s standpoint – surely the more people that use BirdTrack and feeback constructively to the development team, the more likely BirdTrack will secure funding to be developed into a system that pleases everyone (if that is possible?).
Yes BirdTrack isn’t perfect and there are many improvements that could be made but it is developing and positive engagement by more users will see it develop even more. Personally I would prefer to be involved and engaged than snipe from the sidelines.
I think Keith’s post is very interesting and thought provoking. For me the important point is why doesn’t the BTO’s Birdtrack give more back to birdwatchers, like the Swedish system does. That is the way to encourage more use. Contributions to Birdtrack may well increase now that people can use smartphones to submit data, but the essential problem of birders getting relatively little in return remains. If the data is submitted in the first place, why isn’t the same level of detail displayed on the site for the benefit of other users? It would be interesting to hear a response from the BTO.
Interesting, sounds good. I love Birdtrack and now I can use the phone at the time of siting, I record where I never got round to it before, saying that, maybe there’s room for improvement, let’s wait and see.
As Head of Monitoring at the BTO, with BirdTrack being one of my responsibilities, I’d like to take the opportunity to reply to Keith’s blog post, which is a good opportunity to communicate some points about BirdTrack (please note that BirdTrack is a partnership between BTO, RSPB, BirdWatch Ireland, SOC and WOS).
I have to say I’m a little bemused as to whether Keith has looked at BirdTrack recently, as many of his points are no longer valid. Indeed, some have never been valid; BirdTrack has always had a twin-track approach with both lists and casual records being desirable and up to the user (although lists are more useful for many analyses). However, there are some good points in here too for us to take on board.
I agree with Keith that BirdTrack uptake amongst British & Irish birders is not as high as we’d like. I could go into great detail about why this has been the case, and colleagues will tell you that I have indeed done so (at great length!) since taking over responsibility for the scheme. However, as a result we have been working on changing the “user-reward” element within BirdTrack, first by building Explore My Records (to allow users to fully interrogate their own records) and more recently by launching a new interactive home page which presents data summaries in map, graph and ranking formats. Keith doesn’t appear to have looked at this. All non-sensitive records can be viewed from this new home page; try typing a species name into the map then zoom in to see individual records. These are attributed to individuals where permission has been given to do so. A further element of recent development has been in the development of the BirdTrack app for smartphones. This has proved pleasingly popular and again, provides an element of feedback of local records to birders. I’m not sure whether Keith has noticed any of these developments or is simply basing his thesis on having used BirdTrack a couple of years ago?
I’m pleased by these developments, and they are already proving their attractiveness with a noticeable upturn in use this spring already – half a million observations were entered in April alone. I would like at least a million next April. As you might expect, however, we also have a lot more new developments in the pipeline too, including plans for further user-driven access to the database (expansions of the current home page functions), more non-bird recording (expanding from a trial with dragonflies last year) and the ability to allow BirdTrack users to add records overseas. The latter is particularly exciting and is in conjunction with discussions with partners in Europe, America (see Andy Clements’ recent blog re our work with Cornell) and elsewhere. There is also a lot of work planned behind the scenes involving data flows between BirdTrack and other systems, such as iRecord (mentioned by another respondent).
So, we have no shortage of ideas on how to keep improving BirdTrack further, although we do have a slight shortage of resource, and longer-term funding of running such systems is a serious issue that I think we’re all (BirdTrack, Svalan, eBird, Observado, Ornitho, etc etc) going to have to grapple with. BirdTrack has been supported by BTO and RSPB up until now, which pays for our full-time organiser Nick Moran (who spends a large amount of time in dealing with correspondence from thousands of BirdTrack users), some systems development time and a fraction of my time. We have more recently been provided with some very generous donations from keen birdwatchers who wish to see BirdTrack reaching out to achieve its potential that Keith rightly suggests it should be able to. Clearly, we would be very interested in hearing from other birdwatchers out there who would like to become part of this joint endeavour – we probably have plans that would cost more than ten times our available resources! We’re also always keen to hear from folk with information systems skills (web and phones) who’d be interested in coming to work with us on BirdTrack.
I could go on, and talk about: the differences in biological recording cultures in different countries (Britain is particularly complicated in terms of the number of different clubs and organisations involved compared to anywhere else); the links we have tried to develop with individual clubs; the fact we do already have nightly feeds from BirdGuides (same as Club300 as Keith mentions); the fact that BirdTrack deliberately has not tried to set itself up as a bird information service; the links between BirdTrack, the Atlas and other BTO monitoring schemes; our close working with the Rare Breeding Birds Panel to ensure sensitive records are treated appropriately; plans to move away from the rigid links between BirdTrack site definition and the national grid, which was largely required for linking to Bird Atlas 2007-11); and so on. However, I ought to stop before the response becomes longer than the original post.
I am always happy to talk to people about their suggestions for how we could improve BirdTrack, as are my colleagues. (Keith – I’m a bit surprised you haven’t been in touch directly with your thoughts?) And I do accept the premise that BirdTrack could do better. However, I would respectfully suggest that “barely mediocre” is a little harsh. Please believe me when I say that we recognise entirely what is needed to make BirdTrack better for birders. I have entered 83,387 of my own records to date so feel I’m reasonably well qualified to have an opinion too…
[I was going to add a screen grab or two from the new home page but I’m not sure I can – please go to http://www.birdtrack.net and have a play!]
Best wishes
Andy
This is one area where I wish we would collaborate a bit more. Andy Musgrove is quite right about Bird Track but we also have living record, irecord (that I had not heard until now), Bird Track and if you want to keep a record of birding abroad there are similar ones there. There are various County-based on line recording systems. We have independent software to record your own records, some will link to Bird Track, others won’t. Records Centre have other systems, some run on Mapmate, others don’t and I suspect there are some that might even run on Marmite.
Why can’t we adapt something like Bird Track to become Species Track and put up with one system we all use.
Good points Bob. I don’t think it’s reasonable, or even desirable, to work towards one monolithic soviet-style master system. Diversity is good for generating new ideas. However, I do think it’s important that systems talk to each other behind the scenes. It’s something we are in discussion about with many of the other main systems; not very glamorous work but really important. Hope to be able to report back in more detail in due course. Thanks!
Thanks to everyone for their comments on my posting. Some thoughts in response to them:
1. Criticism of me for ‘doing nothing’. I do in fact report regularly, including NIBirds, NIBirding, Irishbirding and Birdguides. Many of those undoubtedly end in Birdtrack by various routes. I am especially pleased about a Montagu’s harrier I found yesterday, news of which was circulated sufficiently quickly that a number of other birders managed to see it.
2. I’m not clear what a negative record is. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence? I have no problem about reporting a dip, and having my name attached to it – happens all the time.
3. Suggestions that I should try other systems (iRecord, mention of local sites in S Wales [as here in NI, I guess]): I could do that. They may be much better than Birdtrack in any sense, but how would it help if they are not used by everyone? Is one of them going to take over from Birdtrack?
4. I have been in touch with Birdtrack twice, over the years, to different organisers. The points in the blog were essentially the same as I expressed then. I received replies, but no indication that the points were thought worth considering.
5. I have looked at Birdtrack recently, and noticed the changes, largely improvements in the right direction, but it still does not, as one commenter put it “give more back to birdwatchers”. It is still not where Svalan was in 2000. I know that casual records are accepted. But I also notice the heavy emphasis on lists structured and collected in certain methodical ways. Surveys like that are fine, but I think that far too many records obtained in other ways are being lost, and as a result we do not have nearly as much data available as there should be. The way to get that data is to engage in a much more effective and user-friendly way with active birders. County record management should be done on it, for example. It needs to be so good that birders, of all types, just can’t not use it.
6. Resource has to be an issue. Andy mentions ‘our full time organiser’, which implies only one person employed on this? I believe Sweden has two (not 100% on that), which given the relative population size, is a far greater commitment. But the Swedish effort is a combination that involves birdwatching societies and government departments, which might be a real difference: how can government be brought in to help support this kind of mass, real-time engagement in recording wildlife, in partnership with BTO, RSPB, etc?
7. I think talk of a “monolithic soviet-style master system” is too negative. Master systems do not have to be soviet-style – they can be extremely efficient when done right. Maybe the Swedish model is not going to work here, for one reason or another, but surely we could manage to join up local and central systems so the user gets one interface?
8. Do Birdtrack organisers discuss respective approaches with their Swedish (and other) counterparts?
Anyway, thanks for the comments, this has got too long already, and I want to head off and see if “my” Montagu’s is still there!
Keith
Thanks Keith – I won’t respond this time round in detail (unless anyone wants me to). I’d just say a) sorry if you didn’t feel you got a good response when contacting BTO previously – we try our best but clearly never manage to please everyone – and the approach to BirdTrack has changed a lot in the last few years anyway, and b) please keep the faith and listen out for further new developments. Essentially, what you’re asking for is pretty much what we’re trying to build. Let’s hope we can get there
Oh and c) it would be good to discuss over a beer some time if our paths ever cross!
Cheers
Andy
Keith
Negative records = saw nothing. Where Birdtrack is concerned it is not quite as simple as that but having tried to work through data for local house sparrows, one of the problems is that people do not submit records if they do not see something remakable. This was particularly noticeable with BGBW and I bet whoever is running things these days is still virtually begging people to submit records with zero birds. It is rare to get zero birds on a site visit but not unusual to see no rarities or migrants and many of my fellow birders in Greater Manchester do not even post on the local forum if they see nothing remarkable. Yet, robins, dunnock, blackbirds and magpies should be recorded even when no little ringed plovers (migrant) or cuckoos (rarity) are seen on my local patch but I know this is not the case and it drives our county recorder mad. I am not sure this implies a fault with Birdtrack so much as saying much about the mindset of UK birders (there estimated to be 10 million of various kinds yet just 1 million RSPB members).
Whilst I would certainly welcome a system used by more birders and with more functions, I disagree with the blog on a number of points:
1) It seems odd to me to complain that not enough birders are submitting records to BirdTrack, whilst admitting you don’t submit records to Birdtrack.
2) The comparitive screengrabs are misleading – on my BirdTrack homepage I can simply type in a species name and get a map of records of that species, showing sightings from the last 30 days in a different colour. In response to Andy you say you have looked at it recently, so did you not know that BirdTrack had this functionality or deliberately didn’t mention it to strengthen your point?
3) The primary purpose of BirdTrack is to collect data, not to act as a finding tool for birders, although that may be desirable. This means that BirdTrack is not directly comparable with the Swedish system.
4) I add lists and casual records to BirdTrack, but one of the reasons that I don’t submit more is the time taken to set up sites and work out grid references etc. Given that, I certainly wouldn’t want to have to give each specific record a grid reference like your Reed Warbler example, I can’t see that catching on in the UK. And quite frankly, whilst I’m happy to tell people there is a Reed Warbler at my local patch, if they are that keen I think they should be prepared to listen out for the exact patch of reeds.
5) With regards to adding different groups – this can only really work to a point. I am interested in how the fungi recording works in Sweden. With fungi, and I’m sure many other groups, because of the different characteristics that need to be checked, I don’t think that in the UK recorders would just take peoples’ word for the ID like you can with birds, dragonflies etc.
Regards,
James
I found this really interesting. I’ve not used Birdtrack for a few years – I’m beyond its reach – but I do use eBird quite a lot. I checked eBird in UK, and theres well over 100 people have used it in the UK – it has a UK species list of 538 which is pretty impressive. eBird can quite easily replicate the map and the histograms that Keith showed – but its rather difficult to get the table of Merlin records anything like as neatly as the table from Svalan. The data is all available and accessible via the points on maps but I can’t see how you could generate the table. I really like that table – and wondered why something so simple isn’t easily available elsewhere. Is it because it looks exactly like traditional county bird reports – and so would be seen as competition? Or, maybe I’m just showing my age and preference for stuff I’ve grown up with?
Keith you could easily input your data to eBird. Only problem, then, is that the information would not currently contribute to the conservation story for those species in the UK. That, for me if I was in the UK, would be the clincher. SO, I agree that its well worth looking at alternative ways of presenting the data if it helps to encourage participation.
Mark
Thanks to everyone who has responded so far. There’s little I feel I need to add, either as BirdTrack Organiser, or as a keen birder who has already painlessly logged 3 complete lists via the BirdTrack App today.
Just to put the meat on the bones of the 4th point in Keith’s comment. Mark Grantham sent a 200 word reply 16/3/07, and I sent a 600 word reply on 3/1/12, to emails we received from Keith (which are in a similar vein to his blog post). Our replies contain very similar points to the ones in Andy Musgrove’s responses. An excerpt from my reply clearly shows that many of Keith’s points are certainly being considered, and in fact have been at the forefront of our thinking for some time:
“we…are very much aware of the myriad of bird recording options available around the world, and keep a close eye on developments (at least in part so that we can cherry-pick where appropriate / possible).”
Nothing has changed – except BirdTrack itself (which will continue to develop and improve)!
I’ll leave you with another excerpt from my reply to Keith, and get back to working on those developments 🙂 “I hope this…reassures you that we are moving in the right direction“.
Cheers
Nick Moran
Perhaps I could add some facts for Birdtrack.Although you lots of you experts with modern tech things find it easy most of us older birders(by the way by far the majority it seems)do not find it that easy or do we even care as there seems nothing in it for us.All we care about is going out seeing birds and enjoying them so unless you can find a way to easily entice us or make our birding more enjoyable you will not get our results.
The big off-putting bit is probably this you almost certainly think if some amateur birder reports a rarity you will not believe it so why should we bother.
Thanks for your comments, Dennis.
It is easy to generalise about birdwatchers and the demographics of the birding community. To avoid this, we prioritise our developments using feedback from users (e.g. the 2011 questionnaire) and by evaluating the pros and cons of other systems.
One way that BirdTrack makes my birding more enjoyable is demonstrated by this graph – at the click of a couple of buttons, I can see how the number of species I’ve seen on my beloved local patch has accumulated so far this year. Perhaps not for everyone, but this is just one example of the type of output you as a birdwatcher can get by using this system.
Records of local rarities submitted to BirdTrack are assessed by local rarities committees, whilst national rarities are assessed by the British Birds Rarities Committee / Irish Rare Birds Committee. It is important that records of scarce/rare birds are supported with a reasonable level of evidence before being added to the scientific record. BirdTrack facilitates the submission of such evidence but we don’t get involved in the assessment, so the “big off-putting bit” for you actually relates to (rare) bird recording in general, not BirdTrack in particular.
All the best
Nick
All this talk has inspired me to re-visit Birdtrack and start adding some records!
Re the data-in vs data-out issues which are alluded to, i.e. you give more than you ever seem to get back, this seems to be a general “problem” with regard to data availability, both in the Uk and Europe. Government agencies collect huge amounts of incredibly interesting and valuable data, at the tax payers expense. it is neither interoperable or available to anyone who wants to use it in a form which is actually useful. Much work still to do re the data access/availability mindset.
Thanks Sian – and great to see you adding records! Agree we’ve more to do re the data access, and we’re working on it. However, I would say that you can see far more than any one person can put in – try zooming into the map on the home page.
Also, please note that BirdTrack is nothing to do with any government agency, nor does it receive any tax-payer money. Running costs are entirely funded by BTO and RSPB and some generous folk have recently donated some extra funds to enable us to tackle some further developments, the first of which is the enhancements to the home page. [Actually, to be fair, Scottish Natural Heritage did also pay for some additional improvements a few years back, such as Explore My Records – credit where it’s due. But this is not core funding.]
Best wishes
Andy
Last year I suggested my local ornithological society adopt Bird Track as an alternative to the locally developed system that the then recorder had laboured under (his words) for many years. The system appeared to me to be perfectly adequate and Nick Moran very supportive, helpful and open to refinements and new ideas.
Not being a connoisseur of bird recording systems I cannot comment further on that aspect of this blog entry, but the issue I have is with the use of the data so recorded at a much higher level. What follows may be surreal to some but I believe we have to do something radical even extreme (such as getting off our collective backsides and shouting from the rooftops) if we are to reverse the trends highlighted by these datasets and many others.
When trying to convince my collegues on said society that we should do far more than merely record sightings but actively campaign as a 75-100 strong group to protect the birds and nature that we protest a deep and meaningful love of and for, I met with opposition that later escalated violently downward thanks to some ill judged actions on my part.
However, the launch of the State of Nature report pretty much reinforces my view that acting as a group is far more powerful than acting as an individual while highlighting the truly alarming state of play that approx 2 million of us in the UK already suspected was the case.
Now lets ramp up the numbers.
By contract to the “one million voices for nature!, tens of millions more are aware of the truly alarming state of play with regard to global economics and societal breakdown. They know about it because they are inextricably caught up in the effects to varying degrees and they are aware of the threats to what they perceive as their self interest. Yet they blindly play the same game futilely oscillating between political parties who cannot fix it because they precide over an unwinnable economic system called globalisation, “free” trade or more accurately “unfair” trade that has led to gross distortions of “proper”, self sustaining values.
Capturing the hearts and minds of these people is the key IMHO in forcing change for the a better world economically, societally and and by definition ecologically.
But whose grabbing the headlines – Nigel Farage and extremists on all sides!
I am busy trying to highlight this situation all over the web from national newspaper commentaries to NGO websites. I spell out what seems to me to be obvious but am warned that I really shouldn’t do that because it will frighten the mass of people into doing nothing. Well they’re doing nothing already so what is there to lose?
My earstwhile ornithological society informed me that their constitution did not allow the addition of a campaigning string to their bow, that their records would go to the BTO who would pass on their interpretations onto to campaigning organisations, such as the RSPB who lobby government and who in tun would eventually sort it all out!!
Well my reaction has been to give up on them and the NGO’s in despair at the naivety, losing friends and alienating people in the process!
There has never been a better time to exploit the failures of the current economic and political systems that govern the globe and the effect it is having on the ecologoical systems that are the pre-requisite to all human activity. Yet the authors of the highly complex reports that I read and am convinced by (at considerable cost to my one remaining brain cell) are nowhere in making their views known and accessible to the masses of people whose REAL self interests are at stake.
If anybody is still monitoring this particular blog entry, thanks for listening to a madman (for that is what I must be to think this will have any effect) and please do help break the current thinking moulds asap. Even Einstein would back me on that one!!