1 Reply by LBacon

  • LBacon
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Re: Birds Red & Amber confusion

Dear all,

we have recently carried out a report via report wizard for all bird red and amber using the following means:
Report Wizard - on taxon records, restricted to one or more designations,
then selecting all bird taxa (expand taxon groups switched on)
all designations - then Birds:Red and BIrds:Amber selected.

This obviously results in a lot of records, but a few things became quickly obvious, when comparing to the paper copy of red and amber in Birds of Conservation Concern list 2009.
First -  There are over 20 species listed with both Red and Amber - surely not correct - most of these have moved between red and amber one way or other in the last review - surley they should be given their most recent status and not both.
Second - there are also about 20 species which come out as amber which, as far as I know have never been on the amberor red lists, including Americamn Wigeon, Americam green-winged teal, etc. as well as a few species such as Mute swan, Goldcrest, Stonechat which are not listed.

It also does not seem to pick up those subspecies of a few birds (geese, mostly) where there is one or more subspecies red listed but not others.

Thirdly, there seemed to be no Ringed Plover or Whimbrel on my list, despite records being in our database.

Also, anyone any ideas on how to exclude thos egees or similar deemed feral in lowalnd eastern england but which are on this list for the benefit of the wild populations.

Can anyone shed any light on why this did not give the expected results?

I haveplenty of time, as obviously I have a large GIS file to edit for the relevant species

2 Reply by MikeWeideli

  • MikeWeideli
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Re: Birds Red & Amber confusion

I have run a few queries to check this out using  Dictionary upgarded to 'Y'   and I can't see any instances where a bird is on both the red and amber lists.  I suggest that you re-run all Index rebuilds from Database tools making sure that you run Rebuild Taxon Group Index as the last one. 

If any of the problems persist after this then they can be investigated, but we need to eliminate anything caused by the index  table first.

Mike Weideli

MikeWeideli's Website

3 Reply by LBacon

  • LBacon
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Re: Birds Red & Amber confusion

Hi Mike

Thanks for that - we have yet to run dict upgrade to Y - we are a couple of steps behind there.  That will presumably rectify the issue - I iwll check it afterwards.

Louise
CPERC

4 Reply by LBacon

  • LBacon
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Re: Birds Red & Amber confusion

HI all,
Having completed our dictionary upgrades I have run this query again, and can confirm that, whilst most of the species listed as amber which shouldn't be there have gone, a small number still persist.  Luckily, all but two species where both red and amber were given as designation have been streamlined to the current group.  the two that remain with both red and amber as their designation are dark-bellied brent goose and herring gulls - I suspect the issue here is that different subspecies have different amber/red listings

In terms of things which I cannot work out why they are there, the species coming out when I search (and all isted as Amber) are American Wigeon, Green winged teal (both as a sub-sp of teal, which I can understand, and as its current status as true species), Ruddy Shelduck, and Little (ringed) plover, Charadrius dubius.  There is still one species for which I know we have records but which is not appearing: Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula).

Whilst the upgraded version has removed many of my issues, I am now still faced with having to remove subspecies which are not listed (such as Blue-headed wagtail, OK, I know that would not appear if I did not expand taxonomic groups when searching, but to not do that would make sub-sp of geese/gulls not appear correctly), the few speceis which still shold nto be there, and I will have to run a search for all the ringed plovers to get them for adding in .

CPERC, grumpily

LBacon wrote:

Hi Mike

Thanks for that - we have yet to run dict upgrade to Y - we are a couple of steps behind there.  That will presumably rectify the issue - I iwll check it afterwards.

Louise
CPERC

5 Reply by MikeWeideli (edited by MikeWeideli 13-05-2011 10:49:46)

  • MikeWeideli
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Re: Birds Red & Amber confusion

i don't know why the Ringed plover is missing but you can correct the this  yourself as a temporary measure. Open the JNCC Collation List in Edit Taxon_Dictionary.  Find the Ringed Plover and click on Edit. Go to the Statuses tab and click on the plus sign to the right of the of the statuses. Go to the foot of the Window and find Bocc Amber in the drop down list. Add a date start. Click on Ok.

Now rebuild Index_Taxon_designation and I think it will be there.

However, a word of warning to those who might take this a bit further. Never add user defined  designation types to an existing designation dictionary unless you want to use the whole of that Dictionary for designations (ie just adding one entry will mean that the whole Dictionary gets included in the designation query).


Some of the other issues (eg sub species) will be resolved if the new proposals for the dictionary are implement. It might be possible to adapt the query which populates  Index_taxon_Designtion to improve the situation further, but this woudl need more investigation. In the meantime  a  batch updat Update could be used to provide a temporary fix to remove  the sub-species you don't want, but a full list would be needed to do this. Once done the Batch Update woudl just need to be run each time the Index_Taxon_status was rebuilt.

Mike

.

Mike Weideli

MikeWeideli's Website

6 Reply by Mary Campling

  • Mary Campling
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Re: Birds Red & Amber confusion

Hi Louise,

There is a spreadsheet available for download on the JNCC website which contains the same designation data as should appear in Recorder - they are both fed by the same source. This may be useful for checking extant designations and whether there are any deviations in Recorder.

http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=3408

7 Reply by MikeWeideli

  • MikeWeideli
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Re: Birds Red & Amber confusion

Mary

From what I can see the Ringed Plover is not on the JNCC Master List, so Recorder is in line as far as this is concerned. However,  on the  RSPB web site it is listed as Amber, which is probably where the problem arises.


Mike

Mike Weideli

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8 Reply by Mary Campling

  • Mary Campling
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Re: Birds Red & Amber confusion

Hi Mike, one of source lists may need updating - will look into it.
Thanks, Mary