Local birdwatchers and those visiting the county can contribute to the
Pembrokeshire Bird Report by submitting their records to the County
Recorder, Jon Green, at jonrg@tiscali.co.uk. Please note that records
submitted to the Pembrokeshire Birds Sightings Blog will not reach the
Pembrokeshire Bird Report. They must be submitted to Jon Green
directly.
Options below show how to do this. Please send in your records as soon
as possible in the new year, certainly by 31 January. In the case of
unusual species, records should be submitted, with the required
description and/or a photograph, as soon as possible, preferably within
one calendar month of the sighting. Further details can be found here.
Annual records should be submitted on a spreadsheet which can be
accessed in two ways.
1. Request a spreadsheet by E mail from Jon Green at
jonrg@tiscali.co.uk
2. A spreadsheet can be downloaded by clicking here.
This will open an online version of the PBG Recording Form. To
obtain a spreadsheet version go to File under the PBG Records
Spreadsheet title and select Download > Microsoft Excel version
and save the spreadsheet to your computer. When you have
compiled your records on the spreadsheet email these to Jon Green.
Alternatively, if you are a regular user of BirdTrack, you can download
your BirdTrack records in spreadsheet format at the end of each year
direct from BirdTrack and send them on to the County Recorder Jon
Green.
To do this log into BirdTrack then click on “Explore data” then “Explore
my records”. On the page that opens, complete the following options:
1. Dates - Year - the current year is the default, but from the down-
pointing arrow you can select “All” dates; “Year”; “Month”; “Date”or a “Range” of dates.
2. Places – The default is County/Region, but you can select a
Place, for example, if you only have records for one location. The
default Country is United Kingdom, but choosing Wales makes it
easier to select Pembrokeshire as the Recording area in the
Subregion box.
3. Species – leave this box blank to retrieve records of all species. If
you only want records of a single species start typing a name e.g.,
Cho will bring up the name Chough.
4. The default Taxa setting in the next box is Birds. If you have
recorded other “popular” taxa (Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians,
Dragonflies and Damselflies, Butterflies and Orchids) in BirdTrack,
these can be downloaded too.
5. Output – you can choose a variety of output types, but the one for
the County Recorder would be Table – View/download records.
6. Click on the blue Create Output button. This provides a quick
summary of the species; number of records; places; first date and
first place seen that year etc.
7. Press the green Download button. This gives a variety of column
fields to consider saying “Yes” or “No” to. Key ones for the County
Recorder to click yes to will be: Place (location where a species was
seen); Grid reference and/or Long/Lat for the place; Date of the
record; Count if you have counts for the species; Comments
(should you have made any about a particular species); Observer
name, Breeding status and Breeding details (if you have
recorded these details).
8. Some additional options to consider could include “Sensitive” for
records of e.g., rare/scarce breeding species; Direction of flight,
e.g., birds recorded during a Sea watch etc. Scientific name could
be considered but Species Common names will appear by default.
9. Having chosen the fields to extract records from, press the blue
Download button. This will create a spreadsheet of the selected
fields with a file name something like bt (16).xlsx. This will include
a summary page of the extracted records and a page with a row for
each dated record.
10.The spreadsheet can then be saved to your computer and the page
with the full list of records should be sent on to the County Bird
Recorder Jon Green. It is not necessary for him to be sent the
summary page.
Recording your sightings on BirdTrack on a regular basis has the
advantage of sending records in direct to the BTO where they are used for
a variety of conservation purposes. Use of BirdTrack’s spreadsheet
download facility for annual records avoids the need to maintain a
separate set of records for the County Bird Recorder.
It is, however, necessary to send the spreadsheet downloaded from
BirdTrack, as described above, to Jon Green as BirdTrack records
will not be picked up automatically by Jon.