FEP member, Roger Jaensch, has offered to provide links to Birdata records for parks where FEP members work. As the links become available they will be added to the relevant park pages. The first instalment appears at the foot of this page below the explanation of Birdata that Roger has provided.
Birdata is a national database of bird records, managed by BirdLife Australia. It is science-based and conservation oriented, with certain categories of systematically derived data being analysed by BirdLife and others to show trends in population size across a species’ entire range of occurrence. The results may influence government decisions on threatened species listings and funding for conservation projects. Presently, Birdata holds several tens of millions of records, some dated 50 years ago.
The links below should take a user directly to Birdata, showing a polygon around the park boundary and Birdata surveys represented by red or blue dots. (It may be necessary to zoom-in to see all of the dots.) Birdata has a survey-based approach. By clicking on a dot and then clicking on the hyper-linked date, the user should see all of the survey details including the birds recorded and counts, but not the observer’s name.
Some surveys are not viewable by the public, or are shown with a broadly generalised location, to protect certain threatened and/or sensitive species, or because the observer marked it as a Private Survey. In some cases, this is enacted post-survey by the Birdata administrative team.
The drawn polygons attempt to follow the reserve boundary as represented in the Google Map used by Birdata; the Map was inaccurate in some cases (e.g. Hancock St), require realignment using the satellite image view. In some situations, an observer—most likely a casual visitor—may have placed the survey centrepoint outside the park boundary, resulting in that data being omitted in this exercise. Possibly a few surveys may be totally in the wrong place. However, these aberrations tend to become obvious over time as revealed by the sheer weight of surveys correctly located.
Birdata has inbuilt vetting systems that should prevent or nearly eliminate incorrect records of species not naturally occurring in the area. However, like any citizen database, there may be records of species that are plausible at that location but that were in fact an incorrect identification. Again, these tend to stand out, especially if investigation of the survey details reveals no notes on identification, nor attached convincing photographs.
Species lists, drawn from all surveys inside the polygon, can be downloaded via the panel on the right-hand side of the view in Birdata. Further information about Birdata is accessible on the Explore page via the Help & FAQ tab and other tabs.
Duggan Park: Birdata – Duggan Park
Nielsen Park: Birdata – Nielsen Park
Redwood Park: Birdata – Redwood Park
Highfields Falls: Birdata – Highfields Falls
Hancock Street Park: Birdata – Hancock Street Park
Comments