New popular places in Clyde added to BTO BirdTrack
Summary
Approximately 100 popular places covering RSBP, SWT and Clyde Local Nature Reserves, Parks, sites that are part of the BTO Birds in Greenspaces pilot and other sites commonly visited by birders in Clyde have been added to BirdTrack. These can be used when recording visits using the BirdTrack mobile phone App and website. Detailed instructions are provided below. We encourage you to use these pre-defined sites when visiting them because it offers advantages for those who compile the many thousands of records submitted for Atlas and Bird Report purposes. It means that your records are stored with a consistent meaningful site name making it easier to work with the data recorded from those sites. What are popular places? When recording sightings in BirdTrack, users are asked to confirm the place where the observations took place. Popular places are sites that have been stored centrally by the BirdTrack team using mapping tools to define the site boundaries. How do I use a popular place in the mobile phone App? In the App, when you start a New list or a Quick add, it will suggest a place using the GPS location provided by the phone. The suggestions will include both nearby places previously defined by the user and popular places defined centrally*. It may also generate a place name using an address look up from the GPS data. In the screenshots below, taken at a user’s Home, the app has suggested the ‘Home’ place which the user previously defined in My Places on the BirdTrack website. Below that, other nearby popular places (underlined in Orange) or nearby user defined places (underlined in green) are also suggested by the App. In the second screenshot the user has selected the option to Choose from all places which gives a list of all of the user defined places and the centrally defined popular places, sorted by their proximity to the user. By tapping the menu icon to the right of “Sort” you can also switch between seeing only Popular Places which gives you a view of the centrally defined sites nearby. *if you see some duplicate Popular Places it is advised that you delete the BirdTrack app and reinstall it to get the latest list of sites.
How do I use a popular place on the BirdTrack website?
On the BTO website, when you use the Add records option it will ask you to enter where you visited. To use a popular place, you should select the At a new place option and then tick the Popular Places tile. The popular places will then appear in red on the map image as shown in the screenshot below. Zooming in will show the boundaries of the site. Be careful not to select any of the drawing tool options if you want to use an existing Popular Place. 
Clicking on one of the red icons will cause a dialog to appear where you can select the Popular Place.
Selecting the Use place option will then log all of the records against the selected site.
Adding the records and noting the remaining visit information is exactly the same as using the My place option.
Why should I use Popular Places? Using a popular place has the following benefits:
Users may still want to define their own places, especially if they want to record observations against smaller areas than the centrally defined popular places. E.g., if they want to be specific about records in discrete parts of a country park or larger reserve. What if the places I go birding in Clyde are not covered? If you often go birding at a site and believe that it is also a popular place for other birders it can easily be added to the central gazetteer in BirdTrack by contacting Tony Hall with an image of the polygon defining site boundary. e.g. a screenshot of the site polygon defined in My Places in the BirdTrack website. |
Wheatear ©️ John Chapman
BirdTrack best practice
Places Giving sites meaningful names helps recorders understand where your records are from. If there are popular places* (see main text) or existing sites already set up, using the same boundaries and names improves consistency. Site names generated by the app are often addresses, changing these to the name of the reserve, woodland, loch or town that the records relate to make it much easier to interpret. Complete lists A complete list is everything you've detected and positively identified – by sight and/or sound – on a single birdwatching visit to a site. Don’t worry about the ‘ones that got away’, and do err on the side of caution when trying to identify unfamiliar species or birds seen or heard very briefly / distantly. Complete lists are particularly useful because the proportion of lists with a given species provides a good measure of frequency of occurrence. If you don’t manage a complete list, a casual list is a great way to capture a few notable sightings. Counts Counting birds is a great way to add value to your records, showing how many birds are in the area and allowing comparisons between years and sites. It’s not always possible to get an accurate count, so even estimating minimum numbers is helpful. You can record counts in the count box and, if they are estimates, mark them with a + for minimum counts and c for approximate counts. Breeding evidence Adding breeding codes from the dropdown menu in BirdTrack is a great thing to do in the breeding season. This can range from recording a singing bird to nests with eggs or young. Again, adding further details in the comments box, such as how many territorial birds there were, how many broods of fledged young and the brood sizes, provides vital information for the local bird recorder. Extra details There are all sorts of extra details that you can record in the comments box, including plumage details such as age and sex and behavioural data. Adding some historical or site-specific context can also help our wider understanding of a site or species, whether that is a first for the site, particularly high numbers for the area or an early or late arriving migrant. Sensitive species If you are lucky enough to come across a sensitive species, such as a rare breeding bird, you can mark the record as sensitive to ensure that it is only visible to the local recorder. Most of all, remember that the main thing is just to go out and enjoy your birdwatching! 
Grey Heron © Lang Stewart
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