Bird Tracking

When listing is more than just an indulgence

This ‘Bio Listing’ lark. Birding. Mammal spotting. Botanising. Whatever it is you do. It’s all just a jolly, right? A bit of fun, a competition: a bunch of geeks, showing off what we know. Maybe so, though it’s not like there’s anything wrong with enjoying yourself. Everybody is out for a good time: who can blame us?

But luckily for our consciences (and our egos), it just so happens that you can make (wait for the pun) your listing count. Oh yes. There are ways without end to share your biological records with somebody else who would like to know, and perhaps even with a scientist who will crunch the numbers and make some sense of it all. From big, annual projects like the Big Garden Birdwatch or Big Butterfly Count, or the less well known Moth Night, to year-round efforts such as BTO’s Garden Birdwatch or, indeed, recording schemes for any organism you could care to imagine, which I’ve no doubt would welcome ‘amateur’ records : see http://www.brc.ac.uk/recording_schemes.asp.

These might be familiar. I’m sure all are worth your involvement. But plug of the day is for the increasingly excellent Bird Track site, run by the BTO. I don’t use it nearly as often as that excellence deserves. Used well, it not only makes use of your birding but will give back – encouraging you to go out and bird even more, especially at local sites that may be under watched by others. The ‘Explore my Records’ feature enables you to see your sightings portrayed on a table, graph or map, filtered by date, location or species, and export data to a spreadsheet. You can compare year lists, generate graphs that show a species’ recording rate changing through the year, view spring arrival dates for swallows and other seasonal indicators. And all those records from thousands of birders, taken together, makes for an enormously useful data set that, as the name suggests, tracks birds in real time.

I should be making the most of its wonders – and if you bird, so should you. So let’s resolve together to make 2012 the year of Bird Tracking. I’ll be aiming to submit at least three complete lists a week (when you enter every species you saw at a particular site, along with start and end times to give an indication of effort – the most useful records for analysis), which will blow my previous recording rates out of the water. And coming back full circle, will lead to an awful lot of pleasing graph- and map-based opportunities for bird-nerdery by the end of the year. Win-win!

Confessions Of A Bird Watcher

“Hello everybody. My name is Richard Smedley and I…am a birdwatcher!”

It’s funny how every time I say it to different people it comes out slightly different yet the reaction I get is almost always the same…

“Oh”

Then closely followed with…

“What’s your favourite bird?”

I’ll reply the way I always do, something along the lines of “They are all my favourites”. Each and every one has something different about them that I find interesting. I don’t know what it is about our feathered friends which capture my amazement in such a way. Even as a simple passive birdwatcher I would find myself staring at them in utter awe as they fly and swoop over my head. Parrots started me on the road to inevitable active bird watching. The colours, shapes and sizes. In my final years of primary school, we had to prepare a 3 minute talk on a subject of our choice and present it to our peers. Once a year, mine would be on birds. Just trying to share my knowledge and love and to show people that these weren’t just things, they were amazing and beautiful creatures. A feeling I still have now, maybe stronger than ever.

Last year I was presented with a question:

“What don’t you like?”

This was a master’s level question and at that stage in my life I really should have a pet hate. But my mind went blank. What don’t I like? Well right up there are bank managers and the Inland Revenue but I hardly thought that was the type of answer required. I hate it when I misjudge a corner and stub my toe, but again, not really what I was searching for.

“Nothing” I exclaimed. “I think everything is great and what I don’t particularly like is more down to my uneducated view of it rather than not liking it. If anything, I dislike my lack of knowledge on all matters and can grow to like pretty much anything if I was shown it and told about it…”

“Bollocks!” was the reply and the next victim of this enquiry was chosen.

But is that not true? Does anyone love something, truly feel inspired by something, that they don’t know? And does a little bit of knowledge not thrust us forward to try and get more? When they asked Neil Armstrong what the moon was like, he didn’t say “Kind of floaty” and NASA left it there. They kept sending people up. I feel it is within our nature to want to gain and understand more…

So it is with that growth and adventurous spirit that I decided to have a go at Biolist 2012! I thought that with additional knowledge and guidance from a group of like minded and very interesting people that I would pick up a few hints and tips on the world around me. The only real big challenge ahead of me…I now reside in another country. Not only do I have to learn about all these new and exciting beasties but I have to learn them for over here. The worse thing of all though is this…even the people over here don’t fully know what they are!!

I’m now spending a considerable amount of time in rice fields, so I can pick up things here and there. But ultimately the rest of the country is unexplored. A recent ecological survey of rainforest in the Southern Island of Mindanao found over 10 previously undiscovered species, including 3 new species of bird!! The reason they found these was because they looked.

Readers of my blog will know that on the two occasions I have gone up mountains whilst here I have found some incredibly rare birds! No one is that lucky by chance. I have also been lucky enough to see wild macaques and, upon telling my fellow researchers today, was not believed. They have not been seen up the mountain for a long time, I must have been mistaken. But I wasn’t. I recognise non-birds to a certain degree of accuracy. That and I wasn’t alone in this rare spot.

What I am trying to say, in my own roundabout kind of way, is that I am trying to spot new things. I am trying to learn about the creepy crawlies and the things that fall off of trees and suck your blood. In fact I found myself particularly interested in a type of spider the other day. These are all, in my own view, a very positive step forward in noticing the world around me, no matter how small.

But at this very moment in time, my eyes are to the skies. The guides for the avian life in the area are vague and a mere suggestion of what could be found and where. So I am starting with what I am familiar with. I’m trying to learn the birds and hopefully pass this knowledge on in the future. Like my primary school attending self, I am trying to show people in 3 minutes what birds I have found; but now I also emphasize the importance of good agricultural practice for both conservation of biodiversity and food security. I think I know how I will start…

“Hello everybody. My name is Richard Smedley and I…am a birdwatcher!”

My name is Richard Smedley and I am a PhD student investigating Avian Biodiversity within Rice fields of South East Asia with the University of Reading and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). I am currently based in the Philippines. You can follow my blog of adventures at www.ricebirder.wordpress.com

This blog was kindly uploaded by Chris Foster (Hat Birder). Thanks boss.