Sighting Reports from Reserves or Not? (1 Viewer)

Hi All

I along with quite a few other new birders are a bit puzzled as to why none of the sites on here (internet that is) that put recent sightings up or monthly reports on sightings up on the internet never put the Common or Basic Regular species on their reports.

I for one have noticed a drop in the following species at some of my local reserves and would like to visit other reserves to see such birds as House Sparrow, Blackbird, Song Thrush, Starlings, Skylarks, Robins and many more.

Because there are no reports of these species and others I take it they are now extinct in the UK, or as one person from a reserve (I will not name said they couldn’t be bothered to put such common species on their reports as everyone as seen them) guess what if you can’t be bothered then why should I be bothered to visit again and please don’t come back with the it takes to long to put them all on the internet if you want people to come to your reserve then a little extra time on the inputting data would be worth it wouldn’t it.

Then maybe the beginners would stay around a bit longer and take this hobby more seriously here’s hoping.

Just a little rant out of the way but hey come on give everyone a chance and put ALL species seen on your reserves on your daily or monthly reports.

Kind Regards

Adrian

Well, it likely is a conscious decision as not many extra people would be attracted to a reserve if it has Blackbirds, Wood Pigeons and Carrion Crows on offer. Most people come for the birds that they won't see in their garden or local park all the time (for House Sparrows, you really are better off away from reserves).
Putting common birds in lists of recent sightings might actually turn more people away, because they won't notice the more interesting birds (for most birdwatchers) anymore!

On a supportive note, a complete bird list with abundance figures would be helpful for any birder. Sometimes, a common bird (like aforementioned House Sparrow) can actually be a bit of a rarity for the site.
Finding someone willing and able to make such a list is the problem. Many people working on the reserves will be volunteers: the best knowledge of the birds on site may not be with them but with regular visitors.

As a recorder for one of the reserves Adrian visits I feel I need to respond. I welcome all re ords of all birds; however receiving an accurate count of a number of more critical pecies (or breeding activity) is more valuable than knowing if a Dunnock was present on a certain date (no offence to Dunnocks!). My annual report tries to say something about every about every species, however hard it is to find something interesting to say. All zpecies need to be monitored as we have seen with the decline of some formerly common farmland birds - Skylark, Turtle Dove, Lapwing etc. Summaries of sightings are just that; headlines of what has been seen over a certain period of time which tends to focus on more unusual sightings, counts of the more obvious species (wildfowl and waders) and breeding / migrant data

Including a complete list would likely result in the rarer species getting lost in the shuffle, and get kind of repetitive. Although by all means reserves really should have available complete checklists of all birds recorded on the reserve.

@Phil my comments were made in general (not at the best reserve in the UK) and I know you do a good job with the monthly reports and the thread is also really informative.
What I was trying to get over to other reserves is that for one reason or another they seem to forget the so called common species and the birding beginner, without this information were is the beginner supposed to get the information from to say which common species are at which reserve.
Around by me there has been a drastic cut in the sightings of starlings and yet some reserves are full of them but not by me how about thrushes once a very common bird now hardly seen in some area's the same can be said for quite a few so called common species and yet reserves still think they should not bother to put them on thier threads on forums or on thier own web sites.

It's like going to asda and then realising they haven't got any shopping trollies because there were 100's thier yesterday but not today.

Kind Regards

Adrian

I think as a beginner, you are usually very well catered for in most UK reserves. Go into the hide and you will usually see a diagram of illustrations of all the likely species you will see associated with the habitat, plus a log book of most recent sightings.

True, there is small subset of the very commonest and most familiar birds which may be omitted from this information, probably ~30 of the commonest, most widespread, resident species you would struggle to find any up to date sightings for, but these are species you shouldn't really have to go looking for. I would suspect it is pretty much impossible for a reasonably mobile, keen birder, regardless of experience, not to find and identify these species in the course of a day/week/month?

The BTO might be a good Organisation for you to check out in terms of UK bird populations and trends. See if your experiences of declines are mirrored across the country.

Go looking for them. You'll get a lot more satisfaction finding them yourself, believe me!

The UK is somewhat spoilt for recorders compared with many other parts of the world. There are areas of Australia bigger than the UK where recorders don't even exist; whole populations of birds are barely known.

When formerly common species go into decline in the UK, then their numbers tend to be noted more carefully; several examples of this already being cited in this thread. Wish we had more of this going on here in our National Parks.

An idea someone else has come up with on another forum is that at the start of the year why don't the reserves just put out a home species list and name all thier resident species that are on there reserve all year round and then when putting thier monthly reports of sightings on the internet they could always end with all home species seen this month.

SIMPLES!

Kind Regards

Adrian

As I see it there are there are many reasons for not putting all species at a reserve on a regular internet based update:

1) It would take a long time - large reserves can have 100+ species per day
2) Thoroughness - most reserves rely on visitors to come back and report their sightings, and many birders don't mention the commoner birds.
3) Most reserves highlight the most unusual species as these are the ones that visiting birders may visit specifically to see - these would become lost amongst a large list.
4) Resident birds would be on the list every time, so it would seem that there was no point repeating them.
5) Birds such as Blackbirds, Starlings and Robins occur in gardens, parks etc. and so I would suggest that the majority of people would see them in their day-to-day or local birding rather than looking for them at bird reserves.

That said, here in Norfolk reserves often have a checklist leaflet of all regular birds (Titchwell, Strumpshaw and Cley do, others may well do too) available free at their visitors centres.

You may be interested in Birdtrack, the BTO reporting scheme. You can use it to find out what birds have been seen in a particular 1km, 2km or 10km square.

Regards,
James

ADRIANS PHOTOGRAPHY said:

Hi All

I along with quite a few other new birders are a bit puzzled as to why none of the sites on here (internet that is) that put recent sightings up or monthly reports on sightings up on the internet never put the Common or Basic Regular species on their reports.

I for one have noticed a drop in the following species at some of my local reserves and would like to visit other reserves to see such birds as House Sparrow, Blackbird, Song Thrush, Starlings, Skylarks, Robins and many more.

Because there are no reports of these species and others I take it they are now extinct in the UK, or as one person from a reserve (I will not name said they couldn’t be bothered to put such common species on their reports as everyone as seen them) guess what if you can’t be bothered then why should I be bothered to visit again and please don’t come back with the it takes to long to put them all on the internet if you want people to come to your reserve then a little extra time on the inputting data would be worth it wouldn’t it.

Then maybe the beginners would stay around a bit longer and take this hobby more seriously here’s hoping.

Just a little rant out of the way but hey come on give everyone a chance and put ALL species seen on your reserves on your daily or monthly reports.

Kind Regards

Adrian

Click to expand...

My local reserve Lochwinnoch has a notice board on which it puts up sightings of visitors to the feeders - this includes common birds on the reserve, but it also highlights more unusual birds visiting the reserve as a whole too. I like that.

On their website, they mention the typical birds expected at various times of the year (like it does for all RSPB reserves) - these are normally commoner birds that you would expect to see.

In the hide (there used to be three, now only down to one), there's a poster with the commoner birds found throughout the year. They don't have a logbook in the hide unfortunately - with the other two hides having been burnt down, I don't think they want to risk putting a book in there.

I don't know if they already do this, but they should hold and regularly update a record of sightings found every day (or even weekly or monthly) - this would include ALL species found. This would be a behind the scenes log, but they could publish it weekly or monthly so people can see what birds are being seen on a regular basis. Now I mention it, I'm going to contact them about this.

But I think if they were writing up a blog about their sightings, they're more likely than not to highlight the less common birds, but the usual birds may still get a mention especially if there's any unusual behaviour from them.

Others have mentioned BirdTrack - the reserve web pages has a BirdTrack feed, so visitors to the reserve can log their sightings and it would show up on that.

I also update the Opus article for this reserve with sightings - this includes all common birds I've seen, plus some less common birds too. This might not be completely exhaustive because as I say, it only shows birds I've seen, I would rely on others updating it if they see anything not already on the list.

I don't know about Adrian but as a relative novice to birdwatching (3 years) at the young age of 62 i always record all birds I have seen so that I can compare notes when I revisit any site. I really don't think it's necessary for the site to record the commoner species as many visitors will expect to see the majority of them anyway.

BTO data will show that every 10km square in the country, with a few exceptions where the habitat is wrong, will contain the 'common' species which seem to be the issue here. It's down to the observer's skill and patience to winkle them out - eg Wren is common, but there are times and micro niches when it's easier to hear and see them ...

Hence it's basically a given that the birds are there, and think that it's a bit superfluous/pointless pointing this out in a manner which makes extra work for hard-pressed nature workers and volunteers.

On the other hand, I agree and wouldn't be surprised if every nature reserve in the country hasn't got a list of all (common and rare species) that have occurred there.

Indeed. In fact it is surprising how many species it is impossible to go a year without seeing. Something for year listers to bear in mind when chasing down a ton of stuff on new years day!

i once got to october without seeing a wheatear. don't ask me how.

Apologies if someone else has already made this point in reply to Adrian but it is partly out of the fact that manning levels at reserves (RSPB, WWT WTs etc) are not constant throughout the year. What I can tell you is that the information is gathered constantly and is now an essential part of reserve work across the country. The break in the chain simply comes from lack of manpower (personpower, if you must) being available to disseminate the information. As other posts have reported, many places have information boards covering even some of the commoner species but it is impossible to enter daily counts in this way. However Adrian, I have good news! Most (if not, all) reserves will have at least some information about annual counts and at larger reserves, more short-term counts but you will have to speak to the warden, particularly out of season when no information assistants are likely to be present. Please do not forget to add your own observations (as I note has been pointed out in other posts) because you really are giving something quite special back and it is a great chance to tests your counting skills if you are new to it.

On the few occasions when I've visited one of the nature reserves near where I live that has a board people have usually listed common woodland species along with the 'interesting' ones, though certainly not complete. You tend to get school parties and a very broad mix of people there though so it's a little different to the big reserves that attract a lot of hardcore birders. Must admit I don't often add sightings to those boards though - certainly when I've visited Cley I don't feel inclined to distract one of the people in the visitor centre to tell them to add Meadow Pipit or Gadwall to the board as they'd probably laugh at me.

The local RSPB group sightings web page I post (well, not for a while actually!) my patch sightings on often has reports from people who list as much as a three hour period with just one or two species, which does annoy me a little as I'm sure they saw a lot more than that and I know the webmaster really likes to get reports about all species, no matter how common (the data goes to the county recorder) and so when I posted about my patch I tended to try to put in all the species I saw, even if I couldn't always remember their numbers (often too much to take in without a notebook).

I think people can tend to focus on the interesting and unusual to the exclusion of the commonplace, which is fine as sometimes time may be limited and I like that everyone can pursue their hobby in their own way, but it does mean that if you only concentrate on those species then if you don't find any you fall into thinking there's 'nothing about' and go home depressed. It may not have the excitement of seeing something rare but I find that noting the common species can be really rewarding, it always gives me a buzz to see the breadth of species somewhere - it feels somehow that the more species there are the healthier the habitat is.

Bird populations are not constant. A standard list for even a small local a reserve might well have Fieldfare and Redwing on it, and a novice visiting in June might be surprised and disappointed not to see them if they are on the list.

Also, one of the good things about birding is the degree of challenge each outing brings. Not everything should be on a plate. Birders should at the very least have to tease out common birds from the habitat themselves, or where is the learning experience?

John