Tuesday February 21st
Kingsbury WP
Two Oystercatchers at Broomey Croft.
Middleton RSPB
Staffs: The Greenland White-front continues to wow at the north end but other species remain under-recorded. There were five Stonechats on site but no details as to where (per Birdforum).
The County Bird Recorders consult the information on the Blog in the absence of information sent in to them via traditional means, be that record cards or letters, phone calls, email/Twitter or more recently BTO Birdtrack. In the case of Middleton RSPB, we currently (unfortunately) have birds which fall into either of the two counties of Staffs and Warks (the reserve boundaries cover both counties with Warks having about two thirds of the reserve area). Unless the county is made known to us, records cannot be used for any purpose other than for the Blog and for RSPB internal planning; birds will be un-recordable and lost to the respective county databases. This seems a shame.
As well as the county recorders the RSPB too, appreciate knowledge of where birds are seen so may I make a plea for more information so that all parties can benefit. If anyone needs more information about the county boundaries give me a call or email/tweet. Thanks.
POSTSCRIPT: Thank you to Stu C who replied to my request for more info and we can now use his data. The five Stonechats were in Staffs.
Any chance you could post an image of the site with the county boundary marked on it please?
ReplyDeleteIf the two county recorders agreed that any unstated sightings were assigned by default to Warwickshire (as it has 2/3 of the landshare) then records would not be lost due to uncertainty of which side of an arbitrary invisible line the bird itself knew nothing about. The tiny fraction that might possibly be technically in the 'wrong' side would be offset by the higher fraction of those not being lost altogether!
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