Many thanks for your reply Steve that was very helpful.

I have to admit that when I first took a look at Rodis and created an account it seemed clunky and a pain to use, however, having received some details of Dipper sighting from my sister-in-law I gave it another go yesterday and though it seemed a little slow, I managed to successfully add some records to the correct square, though I was unable to place them at the correct location - as all the choices seemed to select the same location within the square.

With regard to entering records into Birdtrack, the advice that I was given was to use 1K squares, so I have always put sightings into the appropriate square regardless of whether the bird was seen in an urban or rural location. For those extreemly rare occasions where I saw something of importance I have used the pinpoint facility to indicate locations of nests etc though it is somewhat fiddly to do this for all sightings. It has been a concern that perhaps I am not capturing all of the useful information, but then over the 4 years or so of using Birdtrack, I would say that the quality of the data that I have submitted has improved over time (Yes I do use breeding codes :) ). I do think that it would be nice to be able to pull up maps showing favoured locations of particular species for my regular patches and have the ability to compare year on year changes and if RODIS can do this, then I shall look into that for my Manchester sites.

I do however favour using a notebook in the field as it can cope with sunlight or rain much better than a phone/tablet :)

> For anyone interested in "adopting" a local SBI and recording on the site on a regular basis then a map
> of the boundary can be supplied and the polygon created as a BirdTrack site.
If this is going to make life easier for you, Ian etc, then I'm happy to do that for the sites that I visit at least once a year

Hi Charles,

I've had a look at the new BirdTrack site definition tool and was impressed with how easy it is to create a polygon or path transect line. There are pros and cons to recording by 1km square and by site using a polygon. It really depends on what you are going to do with the records. During recording for the Bird Atlas it was quite an uphill battle to get people to submit records by tetrad or 1km square, let alone use breeding codes If you want to produce distribution maps then it is essential you know which square a species was in. However, as the BirdTrack web page explains most site boundaries are irregular in shape and there are good reasons for wanting to know if a species was recorded at a particular site.

To take an example you created a site on BirdTrack for Middleton and Alkrington Woods South covering the 1km square SD8604. When importing your records from this "site" into the GMBRG database it was unclear as to which species were seen in Alkrington Woods and which in Middleton although I could hazard a guess that Nuthatch was not seen in the centre of Middleton So it does make more sense to create a site for the whole of Alkrington Woods using a polygon and then use a 1km square site for sightings in Middleton, or as you put it "in the urban gaps".

As you know Alkrington Woods is a Local Nature Reserve. Perhaps you didn't realise that it is also a Site of Biological Importance selected by the GM Ecology Unit (GMEU). These SBIs are reviewed on a 5 year cycle and all records submitted to GMBRG (including BirdTrack) are used to assess the status of the site. A comprehensive set of data, especially breeding records with Breeding Codes can make all the difference to the grade allocated to an SBI. The higher the grade the stronger the case for protecting the site. Your sightings from the 1km square SD8604 would be difficult to use in the site assessment as it would not be clear whether they were from within the SBI boundary.

For anyone interested in "adopting" a local SBI and recording on the site on a regular basis then a map of the boundary can be supplied and the polygon created as a BirdTrack site.

I'm not sure about the accuracy of the BirdTrack points will have a look at this tomorrow. However, when using the BirdTrack app in the past grid ref accuracy was limited to a 1km square. For my own recording I use the RODIS app. Most of the technical hitches have now been ironed out. This allows input of records to the limit of your phone's GPS accuracy i.e 10 metres. So alll my records can not only be allocated to a site but also to a 1km square for the generation of distribution maps. It can also be important, for management purposes, to know where precisely on a site a species is found. If that clump of elder is the location of a Willow Tit's nest the site manager needs to know.

The RODIS app also uses Bing aerial mapping, so is ideal for those amongst us who can't walk on water If a bird is on the far side of a reservoir just tapping the location on the map adds the grid ref location of the bird, rather than where the recorder is standing.

Harmonising BirdTrack site with those in RODIS is certainly something we need to look into. There are development plans underway for RODIS, to also allow input of records against site polygons. The GM Local Record Centre will post on this forum once the facility is available.

If anyone has any further questions please post on here.

Steve

-- Edited by Steve Atkins on Thursday 3rd of April 2014 09:04:46 PM

Today's sudden announcement of a major enhancement to Birdtrack, was something of a pleasant surprise though I did find it a little strange that the BTO chose April Fool's Day to make the annoucement (though in fairness, recent editions of the BTO magazine indicated that such an enhancement was in progress).

http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/birdtrack/taking-part/global-data-entry

I'm rather glad now that I did make some effort to record birds and locations while away in Portugal last week with TheBiggestTwitch - though in all honesty the GPS on my tablet wasn't working that well and so I wont be able to identify that many locations. If I can relocate the appropriate notebook I should also be able to enter some other foreign sightings from recent years.

One big change is to the site definition tool which now allows the user to define a site using point, path and polygon methods rather than the old OS square - which fitted very few of the sites that I visit on a regular basis

http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/birdtrack/taking-part/global-data-entry/polygons-paths-points

Having gotten used to recording my sightings by OS Square and remembering approximately where the square boundaries are for my regular patches I was wondering whether to carry on with my current (900+) sites or create new and more accurate sites around the actual physical locations that I visit and to use these for all future recording. I guess that there is some scope for synchronizing Birdtrack sites with those use by Rodis etc? However the downside of this will be how do I record those birds that I see in those urban gaps that will occur around the green sites where most of my birding takes place. Do I carry on using the OS Square type sites for this?


And did anyone notice the really important news item of the day
http://www.bto.org/news-events/news/2014-03/robo-sandals-new-gps-guided-footwear-birdwatchers