[Birding-Aus] RFI Bird species codes
Martin....@dse.vic.gov.au
Would the people/person who developed short acronyms or 'series of
letters' for Australian species codes please send me a copy of their code
list or direct me to where this can be found?
Martin O'Brien
Melbourne
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Allan Richardson
I first came across a four letter code for bird records when doing some survey work for State forests in NSW in the 90's.
The basic format is this: the code represents the first four letters in the bird's formal name, with variations on the theme where required, as follows.
A single word bird name such as Galah would be Gala
A double word bird name such as Striated Thornbill would be St Th
A three word bird name such as Gang-Gang Cockatoo would be GG Co
A four word bird name such as Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike would be Bf Cs, although when I use the code I always put in the hyphens as an added cue to the bird's identity - e.g. B-f C-s or G-G Co for the Gang-Gangs above.
The hyphens also help to separate some species that would otherwise be difficult to separate, such as Brown Thornbill (Br Th), and Buff-rumped Thornbill (B-r Th), or Masked Lapwing (Ma La), and Magpie-lark (Ma-la), or Little Black Cormorant (L B Co), and Long-billed Corella, (L-b Co). Using capitalisation where it falls also helps to separate species as you can see from these examples.
There will always be those species that you can't easily separated, because their codes are the same, such as White-breasted Woodswallow (W-b Wo), and White-browed Woodswallow (W-b Wo), so you might have to add another digit, such as W-bs Wo and W-bw Wo respectively. It won't ring true if you're trying to develop a four letter code database but neither would the hyphens in such a case. Overlaps are not that frequent for local lists, but they do add an element of ambiguity for referencing down the track or when you are listing or surveying on a large trip or large area, where many species will be encountered.
I do know of a number of folk who give birds their own four letter codes as their imagination dictates, but the above code is one more formal approach that I have used now for many years. I find it very useful for saving on note pad paper and being able to get down many species when activity is high. it does take some getting used to, especially when you have to interpret them later, or worse still, you pass them on to have someone else interpret them.
i have noticed lately, while entering bird names into datbases (encompassing all fauna guilds) that many species have sequences of letters that bring only one species up very quickly with few characters entered, such as ie- for Magpie-lark, toeb for Mistletoebird, er-ey for Silver-eye or llarb for Dollarbird. A difficult method to take on board, because you would have to remember all of the codes without a format formula to follow, but especially powerful when others may have to enter your data into a database and you are not around to give them help when they get stuck.
I would guess that most four letter codes are similar or a variation on the above more formal theme.
All the best,
Allan Richardson
Morisset, NSW
David James
(...following Alan Richard's reply with some overlap and some differences....)
Sorry I don't have a file to send you. I don't know of the national system you refer to. However, I have used a four-letter acronym code for Australian birds for about 25 years.
When I was in North America for a few years in mid 80s I learnt of a quite formal and official 4-letter acronym code that was widely used there. It was based on some very simple rules that related to the basic principles of bird names. Bird names mostly have two parts, a descriptor followed by a group name, but sometimes there is only one name. Sometimes there are two words to one or both parts of the name. The rule divides the acronym evenly between the two parts of the name. Hyphens are treated as spaces (i.e. hyphenated words are treated as two words); case is ignored (some of these might be my own rules?). If there is one word in a part of the name then the first two letters of that word are used. If there are 2 words in a part then the first letter of each word is used. The importance of the rules is that it should be possible to work backwards from an unfamiliar acronym, unambiguously to a single species.
Acronyms were used in Australia at that time, but there was little consistency. BFCS for Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike conforms to those rules from America. YFH or YFHE for Yellow-faced Honeyeater did not conform. It would be YFHO. Black-shouldered Kite is not BSKT (pronounced 'biscuit') but BSKI.
Mistletoebird is one word (someone decided to remove the space) so it is MIST, Malleefowl MALL, Galah GALA, ROCK, PILO, FERN, SCRU, etc.
In 1989 (I think) I typed up all the acronyms according to the American rules in a spreadsheet which I no longer have. It was based on the 1975 checklists (Condon, Schodde) and the 1977 list or recommended English names, so now it would be 2 or 3 checklists out of date. I was dismayed to find quite a lot of problems:
Emu is EMU, not four letters, trivial these days but troubling for some computer programs back then.
Some things go against the grain. Fairy-wrens are FW, but Scrubwrens, Grasswrens and Thronbills are SC, GR and TH (e.g. WBSC and BLGR)
Duplicates are out of control (I can't remember them all just now but here are most of them):
WBWO: White-breasted and White-browed Woodswallows
WBRO: White-breasted and White-browed Robins
BHHO: Brown-headed and Black-headed Honeyeaters
BBHO: Brown-backed and Bar-breasted Honeyeaters
BBBQ: Buff-breasted and Black-breasted Button-quails
YTHO: Yellow-throated, Yellow-tufted and Yellow-tinted Honeyeaters
MAHO: Mangrove and Macleay's Honeyeaters
STSA: Sharp-tailed and Stilt Sandpipers
STSH: Short-tailed and Streaked Shearwaters
KEPE: Kerguelan and Kermadec Petrels
MAPE: Macaroni and Magellanic Penguins (I've not yet found this one a bother)
BLPE: Black and Blue Petrels (that's 2 petrels, not a single bruised one)
LBCO: Little-black Cormorant, Long-billed Corella
GRFA: Grey Fantail, Grey Falcon
MALA: Masked Lapwing, Magpie-lark
RNPH: Red-necked Phalarope, Ring-necked Pheasant (no duplicate now that the later is COPH, but the only duplicate I was aware of in North America).
CBCU:
BAOW:
STGW:
SBTH:
BRHO:
CHWE:
MALA is the most common clash followed by GRFA, most others are usually not sympatric.
I've not found a simple rule to sort out the clashes, and have usually ignored most of them because of the location. For Masked Lapwing and Magpie-lark I have used MALAP and MALAR (substituting the first non-conflicting letters in the group part; i.e. using the first non conflicting letters whilst still restricting it to 4 letters). However for BBBQ and most others the rule needs to be applied to the descriptor part. It doesn't work at all well for YTHO: (YHHO YUHO and YIHO? – who could ever figure out what those are from a field note book?). I do like the old bushies’ name Cranky Fanny... Nevertheless, to resolve GRFA I have fallen into the habit of using GRFAN (5 letters) all the time and “***GREY FALCON!” about 5 times. However, the conflicts are many and I have found no simple rule to resolve them all. It's a nuisance that Long-billed Corellas are so widely established these days.
Changes to English names potentially render the code suddenly out-dated, and without recognition of the code as a standard, those who change English names do damage that they are unaware of. Most importantly, the decision to remove hyphens (See the IOC list) can change so much (e.g. if Cuckoo-shrike becomes Cuckooshrike then BFCS becomes BFCO, which then clashes with Black-faced Cormorant; BBBQ and BBBQ become BBBU and create a 3-way clash with you-know-what)
This 4-letter code has saved maybe millions of letters in my note books, and therefore lots of time and space and books, and I keep using it despite all the faults. However, I have never used it in a data base situation. I've often given my notes to others to transcribe to Atlas sheets or for writing-up fauna surveys. They usually complain at first, but with instructions of the rules that I follow they usually do well, query a few things, and after a little practice they always interpret the code easily.
I hope you can take it a step or two further. The three challenges I recognise are:
1) Simple rules for resolving the conflicts
2) Stability in the face of changing English names
3) National standardisation.
I hope this information helps
.
David James,
Sydney
burung...@yahoo.com
==============================
________________________________
From: Allan Richardson <alb...@bigpond.net.au>
To: Martin.O'Br...@dse.vic.gov.au
Cc: birding-aus Aus <birdi...@vicnet.net.au>
Sent: Tuesday, 20 March 2012 11:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] RFI Bird species codes
Peter Shute
I've thought of making checklists for places I go a lot, so I can just tick them off, but haven't got around to it. That would make entering them into Eremaea later much faster.
I've also thought of using a recorder, but I know I'll never get around to transcribing them, and they'll end up just being lost.
I'm wondering if people using iPhone apps, etc, have found they can enter the full names just as quickly as entering codes or abbreviations.
Doesn't this topic get done to death several times a year on birding-aus?
Peter Shute
Philip Veerman
appears to be well used in USA. I think this four letter system is a good
one, or would be, if it was used consistently. To do so is not actually
difficult. Where the rules used create the occasional clash, then a decision
was made to remove the clash e.g. Grey Falcon & Grey Fantail become GYFA &
GRFA and similar for any others. Therefore it will work with no clashes or
ambiguities. Following such a system (if that ever happens) would also mean
that at no time are lower case letters, spaces or hyphens ever used. So that
contrasts with Allan Richardson's comments. Every code is exactly 4 UC
letters (except Emu which is EMU).
However I believe in database work what is used most often is numbers, as in
the Atlas numbers. In doing all the work to set up COG's GBS, I used these
Atlas numbers. Mainly because the COG database already did. We could have
gone with a four letter code and the workings would be exactly the same, but
we didn't. I happen to think a four letter code is easier to remember than
numbers and so I would have preferred to have used that system instead. The
numbers have little if any overriding or obvious principle and whilst they
may have had a meaningful sequence in mid 1970s, that is obscure now.
The way this GBS database works is that at no time are species names (common
or scientific) or any letter codes or abbreviations used in entering,
storing or manipulating the data. The entire data handling and analysis is
done on the Atlas codes (e.g. Weebill = 465). Obviously this saves a huge
amount of work. Then links set in a table, connect the numbers to the bird
names. Thus on screen and in reports you can display the bird name in
whatever way you want it. So you don't need to ever type stuff like B-faced
C-shrike. On the input system a species is selected by inputting the number
which then brings up the bird name to confirm it, before you enter data. If
you don't have the number, it can be selected by typing in the first
characters of the bird name and the system fills in possibilities as you go,
that takes much more effort.
Philip
Shirley Cook
Just by the way, here is an extract from my First Edition of the Macquarie
Dictionary:
"bifcus...Colloq. a black-faced cuskoo-shrike. [from the letters BFCS]"
Shirley
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Shute" <psh...@nuw.org.au>
To: "'David James'" <burung...@yahoo.com>; "'Birding Aus'"
<birdi...@vicnet.net.au>
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 9:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] RFI Bird species codes