Atlas listing (3 Viewers)

[Stephen Dunstan]

Although it was rather misty today I did some Atlasing in urban Fleetwood, where I thought the lack of panoramic views wouldn't be the biggest problem. What I didn't bank on was the best habitat in the tetrad for passerines, the Memorial Park, was next to the ground of Fleetwood Town FC where a second round FA Cup tie was due to start so they were lots of people around and a lot of noise!

Stephen.

 

[Stephen Dunstan]

Today brought classic weather for winter Atlasing, so it was good that three of us had aready decided to pick off some previously unclaimed tetrads in rural Fylde before going on for Sunday lunch.

My tetrad produced 44 species, inlcuding a rather questionable Pintail with Mallard and less suspect Jays, Buzzard and Coal Tit. Good Fylde birds seen on the other tetrads included Brambling and Stonechat, but the Patagonian Conure which we all eventually saw was even more suspect than the Pintail...

Stephen.

 

[Stephen Dunstan]

Two contrasting tetrads today. Rural Fylde at Moss Side produced a couple of Jays and, most surprisingly a Black Swan with Mutes.

This afternoon I took on one of the most urban Blackpool tetrads, including for instance Central Pier and Bloomfield Road football ground. Although only 22 species were seen it still showed what can be in even the most unpromising areas. A park at Revoe held a Goldcrest and 9 Long-tailed Tits and there were several hundred scoter on the sea. Best of all personally speaking was a Chiff Chaff in bushes at Blackpool South railway station.

Stephen.

 

[Surreybirder]

Some nice birds, Stephen... there is something to be said for living near the coast!
I've not done a tetrad for ages... every time I have a day off work (not today) the weather seems to be bad. I've tried to check out my patch for a barn owl (reported by local farmer) but it's so far avoided me. Now another farmer has told me that he has a pair calling every night... so it looks as if I'll have to check that out!
Ken

 

[Dawn Balmer]

Good to see all this discussion about atlasing and pleased that you are getting out and about doing your TTVs and Roving. My own TTVs in Thetford Forest produced a Great Grey Shrike and a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker - both excellent birds to find and very lucky to get on a TTV.

In some areas a lot of tetrads are already allocated in a 10-km square. For the national atlas we are aiming to cover a minimum of 8 tetrads in a 10-km square. There are now 40 Local Atlas projects underway, and they are aiming for comprehensive species lists for each tetrad and many are aiming to cover all tetrads for TTVs. Gathering Roving Records is equally as important as TTVs, so if you find that tetrads are already allocated in your area, then do submit your Roving Records. The species richness maps at the county level on the Atlas website will help direct you to the 10-km squares which need most Roving effort.

I'm not really surprised that we achieved better coverage in the first winter than the first breeding season. I think volunteers generally have more time in the winter for survey work, whereas in the breeding season there are other commitments such as the Breeding Bird Survey, nest recording, ringing and of course we tend to take more holidays away in the summer. The Norfolk local atlas finished the winter fieldwork ahead of the breeding season fieldwork and the same is reflected in the national atlas.

The BTO server has been taken down this morning (Tuesday 9th) for a couple of days whilst we transfer all the data to a new server. Hopefully it will be up and running on Thursday, so keep hold of any of your records and enter them later in the week.

We could do with a weekend of good weather so we can get out and finish our early winter visits before the end of the month.

Thanks for all your help with atlas fieldwork!

 

[scodger]

I'm doing 7 tetrads, a lot of roving records and entering them on the Atlas site. I dont do Bird Track any more as anything TT and RR cover it all. But I have to rekey everything into Excel as I'm sending my data elsewhere as well ( local and regional recorders at the end of the year ). It would be great if all the data I key into the Atlas was available for me to download back into my software ie I press a button on the Atlas webpage , it asks me for the date ranges and downloads all my data. That way I dont have to rekey everything again, I just import it into my software and send it on it's way.
You can do this with BirdTrack but as far as I understand it this wont return your TT/RR records, so I still have to re-key a good proportion of the data.

I approached the BTO, but they were a bit noncommital. What do other people think, would it be useful to be able to have your own data back from the Atlas. Am I missing something and I could actually get it back somehow from the tables we fill in online?

 

[Surreybirder]

I thought that the data was all forwarded to the county recorders anyway.

 

[Mike Cook]

Am I missing something and I could actually get it back somehow from the tables we fill in online?

Sorry Scodger but if you're missing something, so am I. I get round it by viewing my data for a tetrad, highlighting the data table and then copying and pasting into Excel. It probably takes about the same time as re-entering the raw data into Excel by the time I add columns for date and location, but it makes sure that the data in my spreadsheet is the same as that in the database. I rejig the columns to match the format I get when downloading from Birdtrack and send the whole lot to the County Recorder each month.

It would be nice if the BTO could thank us for all the time and fuel we are giving to the Atlas project by giving us a download facility similar to that in Birdtrack.

Ken, The County Recorder should have access to my Birdtrack data. I don't know if the same is true for Atlas data or not. Maybe he just gets a summary report at the end of 4 years so a county atlas can be produced. I send him a monthly spreadsheet because the club produces a monthly bulletin.

 

[Surreybirder]

Ken, The County Recorder should have access to my Birdtrack data. I don't know if the same is true for Atlas data or not. Maybe he just gets a summary report at the end of 4 years so a county atlas can be produced. I send him a monthly spreadsheet because the club produces a monthly bulletin.

Hi, Mike. We're not so active in Surrey. Our quarterly newsletter usually carries 'news' that is about 6 months or more out of date. I understand that all the BTO data gets sent to the CRs in the fullness of time but I don't know what the timelag is.
I don't know of any way of downloading the data from the BTO onto an Excel spreadsheet... although the owner of the Surrey-birders site has kindly supplied me with such a spreadsheet from the data I've entered there. http://www.birders-online.co.uk/ (All the data from that site goes to the CR.)
Ken

 

[Surreybirder]

I did my first TTvisit to TQ34Z (Surrey) this a.m.
It was about 1 deg. above freezing and damp an misty - miserable in a word.
However, there were quite a few birds showing, 38 species in the two hours. None was unexpected but it's always nice to get bullfinch, grey wag, siskin, goldcrest etc. I added four more species outside the two hours, including a sparrowhawk. There were loads of pheasants (33), and a good flock of starlings (100). I also had all the five common thrush species.
Ken

 

[Stephen Dunstan]

It was lovely weather here today for Atlasing. A tetrad I did on the outskirts of Blackpool had nearly 100 House Sparrows, and also a Water Rail which was a nice bonus.

Stephen.

 

[Capercaillie71]

In a slightly sad and nerdy way, I decided to try to calculate how far I walk in an hour while doing a TTV, now that I've done a reasonable number of them. The shortest distance was 2km and the longest 3.3km, but there was a a high level of consistency with most visits clustered around the mean of 2.7km. 2.7km/hour seems quite slow, but I suppose I am stopping and looking at birds and noting things down all the time, so perhaps not too surprising. It would be interesting to know how this compared to other atlasers.

 

[Surreybirder]

I reckon I did about 3.5 kms in two hours today... no wonder I got cold! It was the time I spent trying to count mixed flocks of siskins, chaffinches, goldfinches and staring into apparently empty woods until birds started to appear - not to mention walking across an incredibly claggy flooded field where the clay stuck to my boots!
Ken

 

[scodger]

Of the 10,000 contributors to the current Atlas does anyone know what proportion of them are members of the BTO? And does anyone know how many members the BTO has?

 

[Surreybirder]

Recruit more members and surveyors.
A generally good year, with more than 1,000 new members recruited, which resulted in a small increase in membership from 12,791 to 12,833. There was a 14% increase in BBS squares covered, from 2,526 in 2004 to 2,872 in 2005. Over 31,000 Nest Record cards have so far been received and the final total should be close to the 31,668 cards received for 2004. The number of Garden BirdWatch participants declined by 1.7% to 16,416. The numbers of ringers and birds ringed in 2004 (the most recent year for which we have data) both increased from 2,077 in 2003 to 2,116 and 848,532 in 2003 to 881,920, respectively, although the number of Constant Effort Sites declined slightly from 122 to 118. The number of site visits for WeBS from July 2004 to June 2005, at 26,937, was very similar to the level in the previous year.

Did a preliminary look at one of my survey squares this a.m. (TQ34W). Found 28 species of which lesser redpoll was the most pleasing.
Ken

 

[Andrew Whitehouse]

I did a couple of TTVs for the first time today. NJ90G around Kincorth was rather good, with 39 species (35 during the TTV). The highlight was a flock of around 30 Waxwings. I was also quite pleased with 5 Common Crossbills and a Lesser Redpoll on Kincorth Hill and 4 Little Grebe on the River Dee. NJ90A at Cran Hill to the southwest of Kincorth was a typical 'woods and fields' tetrad and didn't produce too many species: just 24. There were quite a few Fieldfares, a Great-spotted Woodpecker and four Common Buzzards.

 

[Surreybirder]

Bird Atlas website

I notice that the pages have been revamped a bit. You can now look at birdlists for up to 10 tetrads a day to which you haven't contributed. I had a look at Minsmere - mind boggling!
Also, the 'atlas tools' section has been altered so that you can put in a six figure grid ref and it will tell you what tetrad it's in. (This is also where you can type in the tetrad you are interested in and see a map of it - useful if you don't have an OS map of the area.)
One of the strange things is that, as far as I can tell, you can only get full survey instructions by downloading the records form. I may be wrong but I couldn't find the bit about 'nilnoct' for recording that you heard no nocturnal species anywhere else.
Ken

 

[Stephen Dunstan]

I was doing an inland tetrad today and the field feeding gulls included a couple of Greater Black-backed, which doesn't happen all that often. Buzzard, Goldcrest and good numbers of Stock Doves also helped brighten the morning.

Stephen.

 

[Mike Cook]

Also, the 'atlas tools' section has been altered so that you can put in a six figure grid ref and it will tell you what tetrad it's in. (This is also where you can type in the tetrad you are interested in and see a map of it - useful if you don't have an OS map of the area.)
One of the strange things is that, as far as I can tell, you can only get full survey instructions by downloading the records form. I may be wrong but I couldn't find the bit about 'nilnoct' for recording that you heard no nocturnal species anywhere else.
Ken

Hi Ken,
I hate to admit this but I've only just noticed an 'atlas tools' section. Has it always been there in some form or other?

I think 'nilnoct' only applies to roving records (I would not fancy doing some of my TTVs in the dark). I agree, there's no separate instruction sheet for roving records so you've got to download the recording sheet.

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. Mind you, I hate doubling back (with clock stopped), so I tend to take a longer route if it lets me go in a circle or figure of eight.

At least it doesn't say that all habitats must be given equal time, so you can spend about 80 minutes at a nice productive bit of water or woodland and then cover less productive farmland and a village for 20 minutes each. Or am I cheating?

Mike

 

[Surreybirder]

Hi Ken,
I hate to admit this but I've only just noticed an 'atlas tools' section. Has it always been there in some form or other?

I think there was a facility for looking up tetrads on the map but I think it was somewhere else originally.

I think 'nilnoct' only applies to roving records (I would not fancy doing some of my TTVs in the dark). I agree, there's no separate instruction sheet for roving records so you've got to download the recording sheet.

:t:

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. Mind you, I hate doubling back (with clock stopped), so I tend to take a longer route if it lets me go in a circle or figure of eight.

Mike

It may partly be the nature of the habitat. If you go racing through an oakwood you would miss most birds.
I got a couple more NILNOCTS tonight - I'm not sure it has much significance because if I went to the same woods on a less windy night I might well hear a tawny owl at least.
Ken