BUBO Listing News
Top Targets!
28 November 2007
In the definitive British work on birders and birding, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book
Well, now BUBO Listing can help. We have come up with a brand new feature that can be used to find the top targets for any list, whether your own or that of another lister. At the top of any given list (e.g. viewed through View All Lists, or View/Edit My Lists) you will now see a target icon 
to indicate that you should click this to see the top targets for the list. (Select the tick icon 
to return to viewing the actual species list.)
The list of targets returns all species available for that authority that are not already on the list in question. For more interest, however, it also ranks these in order of 'easiness', with the most expected next addition listed at the top. But how is this worked out?
For any list, we look at all other lists currently entered on BUBO Listing with the same combination of region, period, authority and all birds/self-found. For every species missing from the list you have selected, we see how many of these other equivalent lists each species is currently recorded on. It is this number that enables us to tell you which are your top targets for any given list.
This approach can produce some interesting results. For example, examination of one BUBO lister's BOU British Life List gave the top five targets (with % of equivalent lists recording the species) as:
- Great Reed Warbler (53%)
- Ortolan Bunting (49%)
- European Bee-eater (48%)
- Radde's Warbler (48%)
- White-billed Diver (48%)
For a list of just over 400 species, this is a fairly expected list of reasonably 'gettable' species that have just passed the lister by, and that he can expect to pick up some time fairly soon. However, looking further down the list of targets, it initially appears surprising to see Green Heron (11th target), Pacific Diver (15th target) and Black Lark (17th target) appearing above such relatively regular birds as Black-winged Pratincole (18th), Black-headed Bunting (20th) and Greater Yellowlegs (41st). This is because, the way the ranking is calculated, recent well-twitched megas like Pacific Diver have been recorded by more listers than some other species which are numerically more regular, but can be tricky to get to grips with. Additionally, birders are likely to travel further for megas than for those moderately rare species which they feel they will get back at some stage.
We hope BUBO Listers will appreciate this new feature. Don't forget, once you've found your list of top targets, just click on one of those species names to see who else has recorded it, and where and when.
And of course, if you have a friend using BUBO Listing, you can check to see what their top target currently is...!
Bird Atlas 2007-11
31 October 2007
Birders in Britain and Ireland are surely all aware that a new bird distribution atlas has been in the planning for some time. Well, the planning is over and the fieldwork started on 1 November 2007 and will carry on until summer 2011. Birders are now needed to help with both timed tetrad visits or simply listing of birds in given 10-km squares. The aim of the atlas project is to map the distribution and relative abundance of every species in Britain and Ireland in both the winter and breeding season.
Obviously, BUBO listers include many of the keenest and most dedicated field ornithologists in the country. Just in case anyone out there wasn't already planning to get involved, please visit www.birdatlas.net to get more details on this exciting project. This new website allows you to select tetrads and submit records far more easily than during past atlas surveys, and will provide a fascinating record of the way in which the project is progressing.
The results of previous atlas projects, in 1968-72 (breeding), 1981-84 (winter) and 1989-1991 (breeding) have resulted in iconic publications, and the results of the 2007-11 are eagerly awaited. Many species are suspected to have changed in status dramatically over the last few decades, but Bird Atlas 2007-11 will be the new definitive work to describe the status of the avifauna of Britain and Ireland.
NEW: Western Palearctic Listing
28 October 2007
.jpg "Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis)")
Ever seen a Pied Kingfisher? How about Semi-collared Flycatcher? Or perhaps Dark Chanting Goshawk? After the success of BUBO Listing for British and Irish listing, BUBO has set its sights wider. It is now possible to enter your Western Palearctic (WP) lists on BUBO Listing and, as with other lists, to compare them with those of other listers. To enter your WP List simply log in to BUBO Listing, select 'Create New List', choose the region 'Western Palearctic' and away you go. For ease of use, if you already have a British list entered onto BUBO Listing, you can use this as a base for your WP List, saving a large proportion of the record entry.
.jpg "Semi-collared Flycatcher (Ficedula semitorquata)")
As with listing in Britain and Ireland, the question of which species are countable is not clear-cut. The approach of BUBO Listing is to allow lists based on published 'authorities', rather than determining our own base-lists. For the WP region, we have initially allowed two different base-lists, one more conservative and one more progressive. The AERC (Association of European Rarities Committees) list is more 'official', although it has not been updated for several years. (BUBO Listing has added several 'provisional' species as a result, in the expectation that the AERC list will be updated in due course.) The UK400 Club's Western Palearctic list is more up-to-date. It takes a more progressive view on splitting and is more open-minded on the subject of potential escapes, although the rationale behind the inclusion of individual species is not published.
These two authorities were chosen partly because they represent two extremes, and partly because they were readily available. It is likely that further WP authorities may be introduced in due course. Both lists can be used via the 'Create New List' facility, and the base-lists for AERC and UK400 Club, plus background information about these lists and authorities, can be viewed via the Checklists menu item at the top of each page.
.jpg "Dark Chanting Goshawk (Melierax metabates)")
One feature of BUBO Listing is that details of 'sensitive records' (especially locations of rare breeding species) can readily be hidden from general view. British records are regularly reviewed to check that such information is not appearing in the public domain. Clearly, given the greater size of the WP, it will be more difficult for assessment of which details should or should not be kept hidden. It is important, therefore, that listers use great discretion and do not reveal detailed locations of nesting sites for rare breeders. Moreover, if other listers notice information on the site that they feel should not be made public, they should contact us immediately.
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