BUBO Listing News

Green lists, BIGBYs, photo lists etc.

02 June 2009

We have just introduced a few new list "types" to BUBO Listing. As well as self-found lists that we have always supported, it is now possible to add the following.

Green Lists

Also referred to as zero-carbon lists, or BIGBYs (Big Green Big Year), we are allowing three different types of these:

Green: foot - true green lists, where all birds recorded must be whilst walking from your home or place of work
Green: non-motorised - as above, but forms of non-motorised transport (e.g. bicycle, canoe) are allowed as well
Green: public transport - birds recorded without using any non-motorised transport except for scheduled public transport (ground or water transport only, e.g. buses, trains, ferries - no planes allowed!)

You can read more about Bigby Birding at www.sparroworks.ca/greenbirding/index.html.

Ringing/Banding Lists

Record birds that you have ringed (banded).

Photographic Lists

Record birds that you have photographed (preferably identifiably!)

False Lists

A false list is birds recorded anywhere in the world, i.e. not just within the list location. Hence a False Western Palearctic list includes those species that have been recorded in the WP and which the observer has seen, either inside or outside the WP region.

To use any of these new list types is very simple: when you are choosing the parameters for a list, e.g. location, period and authority, just select the appropriate list type from the new dropdown. The default value is for a "normal" list, i.e. all records.

If you want to see a list type that we do not currently support then please let us know.

Garden/Yard Lists

03 January 2009

You can now keep your garden or yard list on BUBO Listing.

Simply use the new Add Site facility to add your own garden and you can then create a list for it as normal. Please set the location type to 'Garden/Yard' as shown in the example below - we will be using this for extra analysis in the future. You will also be prompted to ensure that the location name has the suffix ' - Garden' or ' - Yard' - this is to help distinguish these clearly.

We recommend you add your garden to the appropriate county in the location tree, but if you wish you could first add the town/city as a location if it is not there already, and add your garden to that. In the example shown below the garden is being added to the already existing location Worthing, but it could have just been added to the county West Sussex. Please use an appropriate geographical name for your garden - you don't have to include the street name as in the example if you think this is better kept private, but it does help in cases where you wish to keep different garden lists within the same area, e.g. if you have moved a short distance.

Add Garden

We recommend you use the list comments feature to indicate any particular rules you use for counting garden/yard birds, e.g. whether birds have to be actually in the garden, or whether you count anything seen from the garden.

This is an area we will be enhancing further, for example to allow you to compare all garden lists within a certain county or state. If you have any suggestions about garden listing then please let us know in the BUBO Forums. In the meantime, here's wishing you plenty of new garden/yard birds in 2009 with BUBO Listing!

Add Your Own Birding Sites

03 January 2009

You can now add your own favourite birding sites to BUBO Listing. Hence if you want to start a list for a particular site or local patch that we do not currently have, just add it yourself!

You need to be logged in first. Then, from View All Lists or Create New List, just navigate to the appropriate place in the world location tree where you wish to add the new site and right-click to bring up a menu of options. Select 'Add new site here' and you will then be able to enter the site details.

Add Site

Any site you add will be available immediately. From time to time we will review new sites and may move them if we consider there to be a more appropriate place in the location tree for them.

From the screenshot above you will also notice another new change, which is the number in parentheses after the site name. This is the total number of lists currently available for that location, i.e. the total of life, year, self-found etc.

We have added most known birding sites for Britain already. For other areas of the world feel free to add any sites you wish, even if you do not intend to record a list for them: we'd like this to develop into a useful global resource for site lists. If you have a long list of sites to add as a batch then contact us and we'll upload them for you.

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