The Lincolnshire Bird Club

This is a very worth while project, if you can help, please get in touch with Kev....

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Hi

Most Forum readers will probably not be aware of the large-scale bird data project underway at Gib at the moment.

In 2008, we set ourselves the target of inputting 50 years of bird data from the daily logs into the database in five years. All of this data was previously only held on paper logs. We estimated that this task would take 1.1 million key strokes to enter onto the database.
Centrica kindly provided funding to enable 400 hours of data-inputting per year for the five year period and the inputting is on target.

However, once the data is input onto the database it is important that it is checked for any errors that may have occurred during the inputting stage. There will always be an inevitable low percentage of errors when dealing with so much data and it is important to clean these up before the data can be treated as 100% reliable.

The data checking process is currently underway and being led by Tim Bagworth and Mike Archer. We would be really grateful if anyone could spare some time to help them with this work. It is not actually as dull as it sounds and it is fascinating to look at the patterns of bird occurrences during the individual years as well as changes year on year. To make all of this data available for future scientific research etc is a really exciting challenge. If anyone feels that they could help with this work by doing a day or half day at Gib every so often during the winter then we would be really pleased to hear from you (my email is below).

Thanks

Kev
kwilson@lincstrust.co.uk

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Andrew Chick
Website: http://www.forktail.co.uk/

I've just got back from my third day of data checking at Gib. It's a remarkable project and the amount of voluntary work already completed by Mike Archer and Tim Bagworth is staggering. I found it extremely interesting going through a variety of sources relating to Gib. including Lincs Bird Reports dated 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1976. Records of 150 Turtle Doves flying in off the sea in May 1963 are mind boggling 50 years on! Some of the names of the contributors are long forgotten but amongst others, John Marshall, Ed Mackrill, Keith Atkin, the late Alex Parker, Graham Catley, Howard Bunn etc. have continued to contribute to Lincolnshire Ornithology records. If anyone can spare a day before the end of March volunteers are still required so Email Kev Wilson - you'll enjoy seeing what was about in previous years!