Atlas listing (2 Viewers)

[Capercaillie71]

You and Capercaille don't cover much ground on your TTVs, do you. I find I'm covering up to 8km in order to give all habitats a reasonable chance.

I assume that's for a 2 hour TTV. The figures I calculated were per hour, so c. 5 - 6km for a 2 hour visit.

As Ken says, the nature of the habitat makes a difference but so does the terrain underfoot. Quite a lot of my tetrads have been moorland which is not particularly rich in birds at this time of year, but if there are no paths then ploughing through knee deep heather certainly slows me down, not to mention some of my tetrads involving up to 400 metres of ascent.

 

[Mike Cook]

I assume that's for a 2 hour TTV. The figures I calculated were per hour, so c. 5 - 6km for a 2 hour visit.

As Ken says, the nature of the habitat makes a difference but so does the terrain underfoot. Quite a lot of my tetrads have been moorland which is not particularly rich in birds at this time of year, but if there are no paths then ploughing through knee deep heather certainly slows me down, not to mention some of my tetrads involving up to 400 metres of ascent.

Yes, you're quite right. All my tetrads have been on the coastal plain and my problems tend towards deep mud and flooding. I'm only leaving myself 2 tetrads to do in the final year, so if I ask for a few more, the high moors are probably all that will be left, looking at the take up maps. Not a lot of habitat variation up there I suppose unless you've got exposed crags or valleys with a few stunted trees.

My only one hour tetrads have been 90% sea with just a narrow strip of land. Unless conditions are right for sea watching, one hour is plenty. They would not be covered at all if we weren't doing a local atlas.

Mike

 

[markgrubb]

I see from their stats that one person has done 285 TTV's and another person(or maybe the same person) has submitted 22324 roving records!!

 

[Surreybirder]

I did some 'roving records' on a tetrad the other side of our village this a.m. TQ34X. It was -5 deg C when I left the house. Quite chilly writing things in a note-book but the frost made everything look lovely.
I had 26 species in all of which the 'highlights' were 13+ snipe, 30 pied wagtails, little egret, grey wag., 2 lesser redpolls, lapwing.
Ken

 

[Stephen Dunstan]

Did one of the most rural tetrads I have today, Eagland Hill in the heart of agricultural Over Wyre. Highlights included Pinkfeet, 75 Skylark, 190 Mallard on a farm pool and a Kingfisher on a ditch.

Stephen.

 

[StevieEvans]

Retrospective tetrad visit

I started my 2009 surveying at 12:30pm on New Years Day afternoon.

Very rarely stray from my local patch & teamed up with another local (& slightly more seasoned foot slogger) & managed a fair total of 70 species including:- Long-eared Owl, Mealy Redpoll, Jack Snipe, Woodcock, Water Rail, Little Owl, Kingfisher, Oystercatcher.

It wasnt untill i got home, i realised that all 70 were in a single Tetrad :eek!: NZ34J.

Looking forward to visiting all the nooks & crannies in 2009 that i didnt get round to last year.
Steve.

 

[Stephen Dunstan]

I didn't think it would be nice enough weather to survey today, but it didn't seem that bad in the end so I did a rural tetrad at Ballam, near Lytham. Very enjoyable with large numbers of Lapwing and Golden Plover and one or two bonuses including a Little Grebe on a dyke presumably displaced by the freeze.

When I input my records I missed a species. When I went to add it it said it was already there when it clearly was not. I added it as a roving record. This has happened to me before, I don't know if it is a coincidence, but it is always wagtails and pipits where it won't accept them.

Regards,

Stephen.

 

[Surreybirder]

I didn't do a TTV today, I just walked around my home tetrad TQ34R. I got my first 'winter' kingfisher for the tetrad. Later I saw a little egret fly over. I tracked it down to a small ditch and there was a second kingfisher - not unlike the London busses. The other bonus was that I saw some lapwings on the ground so I was able to upgrade them from 'flying over'. I've now seen 73 species on my tetrad... which I thought was pretty good for an inland Surrey tetrad until I read of 70 species in two hours by Stevie :eek!:
Ken

 

[Surreybirder]

I'm having a good run of herons... I found a bittern on TQ34K this morning.
It made me wonder what I'd do if I found a rarity while doing a TTV... by the time you've done a proper description quite a bit of the daylight would have passed!
Ken

 

[davercox]

It made me wonder what I'd do if I found a rarity while doing a TTV... by the time you've done a proper description quite a bit of the daylight would have passed!
Ken

Ignore it and keep going, obviously, rarities are meaningless to the Atlas

 

[dantheman]

Make mental notes, phone some other local birders/the rarity services to get the news out, take some pics with your handy digital camera/mobile phone (especially the latter if flight shots are involved . . ), take some proper notes too of course. (In that order??) As soon as the first person arrives, carry on with the survey. Hopefully you won't have to wait for too long . . .

Rehearsed the scenario in my mind, but never expecting it to actually happen of course . .

 

[joannec]

I

When I input my records I missed a species. When I went to add it it said it was already there when it clearly was not. I added it as a roving record. This has happened to me before, I don't know if it is a coincidence, but it is always wagtails and pipits where it won't accept them.

Regards,

Stephen.

I've not had that happen. I have missed a species (but they weren't wagtails or pipits) but then went to edit records and was able to add it......maybe an email to your county co ordinator?

 

[Mike Cook]

I've not had that happen. I have missed a species (but they weren't wagtails or pipits) but then went to edit records and was able to add it......maybe an email to your county co ordinator?

The Atlas home page says that ROs are now checking (validating?) all Atlas/Birdtrack records. It makes sense for the system to prevent a set of records being changed once they've been checked, otherwise no one would know where they were. I agree, email your RO/county coordinator.

Can't think why pipits/wagtails should be special.

Mike

 

[Stephen Dunstan]

Mike,

This is nothing to do with validation of counts, they haven't been checked and when they do come to be I am the RO and the coordinator has said I can validate my own data!

I am sure there is nothing special about pipits or wagtails, I think it is a 'bug' in the system.

Regards,

Stephen.

 

[Surreybirder]

Mike,

This is nothing to do with validation of counts, they haven't been checked and when they do come to be I am the RO and the coordinator has said I can validate my own data!



Stephen.

In Surrey, the RO has delegated validation of records to the 'square stewards' - so I'm responsible for TQ34. It's the first time I've been responsible for record validation as I've never been on the county records committee for example. I find that it's a bit trickier than you might think. There's a temptation to query everything that's a bit out of the ordinary! One or two were obviously suspect (e.g. Dartford Warbler in farmland) and a hawfinch (when none has been reported in my square within living memory) but what about a grasshopper warbler - a major rarity in East Surrey over the last 20 years but some suitable habitat. It would be easier if one knew whether the observer was experienced or not but I've no idea who the observer was. There has also been a string of scarce terns at one particular pond. On the whole, I'm tending to query when I've got more than a minimum amount of doubt. How do you approach it Stephen?

 

[dantheman]

It's the first time I've been responsible for record validation as I've never been on the county records committee for example. I find that it's a bit trickier than you might think. There's a temptation to query everything that's a bit out of the ordinary! One or two were obviously suspect (e.g. Dartford Warbler in farmland) and a hawfinch (when none has been reported in my square within living memory) but what about a grasshopper warbler - a major rarity in East Surrey over the last 20 years but some suitable habitat. It would be easier if one knew whether the observer was experienced or not but I've no idea who the observer was.

How can you adjudicate on such things and get them right? (Not you personally, anyone that is). With a lot of habitat being surveyed, footpaths trodden by birders that maybe never would be the odd thing is bound to turn up.

re Dartford Warbler being 'obviously suspect in farmland' - surely it depends on the quality of habitat - how degraded it is. Given that 2/3 individuals started wintering in a small patch of scrub at Rainham this winter, and as far back as 2002 they were being looked for in Kent as a survey looking for evidence of breeding in areas of rank grassland with tall shrubs . . . . well there's always a possibility. You would only need the prescence of a small new-ish plantation in the summer or a bit of brambley scrub (with or without gorse) in the winter.

re Hawfinch - they can appear anywhere where suitable food is (or even fleetingly where it isn't), so no reason why not.

Surely you have to let them through, but seems like you would have less to go on in making the decision than a county rarity panel (where you'd have a description at least, and some idea of who the observer was). Not an enviable position!!!!! Either a lot of false records are going to go into the atlas, or a lot of good ones will be missing!! Maybe there is a need for a description to be required from observers of 'interesting' (not necessarily rare) birds from each tetrad! (By description I'm neaning more of an account of their seeing the bird than a feather by feather tract description. . . .) At least you'd know what the person's views were like (a fleeting glimpse or a nice male perched up in full view). And a handle on their previous experience of it. Just an idea, but probably would mean a lot more work.

Anyway, good luck with it and your atlasing.

(If you'll excuse my comments, (grandmother-teach-suck-eggs :eek!: ) I think in your position I would also find it incredibly difficult to know whether to 'hire or fire', especially if I did have a handle on the habitat in the tetrad concerned. But then birds don't always respect our expectations of them all the time!

 

[Surreybirder]

Hi, Dan
All good points!
I probably didn't express my role quite right. I have to tell the RO any records that I think might be suspect. It's up to him to follow up the query with the observer. In some cases this is done by putting a message on the observer's Atlas data home. This is great if, for example, the person who saw the Dartford warbler has made a mistake with the Grid Ref. and it should have been in the middle of Ashdown Forest. I think the RO can see the name of the observer, too, so that would help if it was someone known to be reliable. I would have no hesitation accepting hawfinch from, say, an active member of the local RSPB group - but I would be worried if it was a novice who looked out of his kitchen window and saw a 'hawfinch' on his bird feeder. I guess it's a question of trying to get the balance right between rejecting all interesting records and accepting too many dodgy ones.
As arose in an earlier post, I've had several local people report a barn owl but I've not entered it on the database 'cos I've not managed to see it myself - the reason given was that the record needs to be capable of being authenticated. Second hand records would be even harder to follow up than first-hand ones.

PS UK lifelist, including rest of the world? I don't quite understand!!

 

[dantheman]

At least that takes some of the pressure off then. Of course if it turned out that just one observer (who was unheard of beforehand), came up with a bunch of local rarities in unexceptional habitat in just one or two tetrads after only a few hours surveying, you would wonder!! And if you were unsure that they should go in (I'd think, maybe, not??!!), then you'd have to question their whole surveys, after all, how would you know that their flock of 15 Meadow Pipits weren't in fact Linnets or even House Sparrows etc etc . . .!!

Otherwise, as you say it's a balance of weighing things up.

Part of the fun of the Atlas I guess, and I think it's been said in regard to this or similar aspects, everything will hopefully equal out given the great number of squares and observers concerned!

PS UK lifelist, including rest of the world? I don't quite understand!!

Obviously I'm not a twitcher per se, but at some point last year when everyone was discussing people's list totals in their signatures (with respect to inadvertently including Ireland into their 'uk' totals, I felt the need to add mine on. Since my total would be a bit low, and just for fun, I thought I'd boost it a bit by including in all the species which are on the BOU 550+ British List and I've seen anywhere in the world, in addition to those I've actually seen in the uk. So that 403 or so includes birds like Double-crested Cormorant (seen in the USA) and Great Spotted Cuckoo, Lesser-short Toed Lark seen in N Africa etc etc .... Compared to some it's still quite a low total, but there you go!

Apparently it's been done in the Netherlands or somewhere, and was quite a popular concept once! It could take off here in the uk . . . maybe??

 

[Stephen Dunstan]

No easy answers to assessing questionable records I would think Ken. I was only recently reading Bill Oddie's thoughts on this in 'Gripping Yarns'.

I did a rural tetrad at Eagland Hill today and had my first Little Egret on a TTV. Very few of my tetrads are at estuary sites so this was pleasing. I also had Yellowhammer, Tree Sparrow, Buzzard, 300 Pinkfeet etc.

Stephen.

 

[dantheman]

And anyway, on the actual topic of atlas birding, did a square bordering on the Thames near Erith this afternoon. Not many species, 38, bit windy too and very few hedgerow type passerines.

Highlights were probably the waders, 180 Black-tailed Godwit (1 in summer plumage)feeding on the mud with similar numbers of Dunlin and Redshank.

2 Green Sandpipers in some flooded fields, with another 4 Godwit and a Little Egret were very nice. No Grey Herons. All 5 thrushes and a flock of 50+ Linnet, 4 Green Woodpeckers and the only raptor a female Sparrowhawk which I encountered several times. 20 Ring-necked Parakeets presumably getting ready to roost. No rarities to report or set conundrums for any tetrad supervisors!!