Bird Atlas - Square Summary feature

There's a new feature of note on the Bird Atlas website to help observers target species not yet recorded. This is the Any Square Summary list - it appears under My Square Summary. You can use it to see summary species lists with breeding status for any tetrad or hectad (10km square). But, I suspect it is server resource hungry so you are limited to 10 queries a day to avoid overloading the system.

Happy Christmas and good Atlasing

Bird Atlas Validation

I am pleased to say that the validation module of the Bird Atlas website is now live. This will allow me and a couple of other people (in York's case, local recorders) to validate your records. This is to ensure confidence in the Bird Atlas data.

Records can be queried for a number of reasons: e.g. the identification, the grid reference, the breeding code or unusual numbers. Sometimes this may be the result of a typo. The species may be unusal for the area or time of year - the Atlas guidance is to exlude records not accepted by local records committees (or BBRC, if relevant), but note that records will not be deleted.

If there is a query on the record, you will see a message on your home page once you have logged on. I have already had one of mine queried, from a different region.

Enjoy your Atlasing - there's still time for first winter visits in new tetrads.

Happy Christmas