The Surrey County Bird Recorder is: Jeffery J. Wheatley.
email: sightings@surreybirdclub.org.uk (please read the guidelines before emailing a report)
Most new Surrey Bird Club Records are now being kept in a computer file and accessed by referring to it. The original paper records are kept separately for archiving and back-up. The copying of paper-based records into the file takes a great deal of time, much of which can be saved if observers send their records in electronic form.
The SBC records are kept in a commercial DOS-based database called PARADOX, which is able to accept inputs on disk in a wide variety of formats provided the files are on IBM-compatible 3.5 inch floppy disks or as attachments to E-mails.
Records can be submitted by either email or post.
Before submitting a report, please read the reporting guidelines.
Reporting Guidelines
The PARADOX file has 32 separate fields but for most purposes there are nine basic pieces of information wanted for each record.These are:
- Name of observer,
- Species,
- Day (figure),
- Month (figure),
- Year (2 digits such as 99 or 00 for 1999 or 2000 or 4 digits such as 2000. Use 2 or 4, do not mix),
- Number of birds (words or figures),
- Name of place,
- Grid reference (6 figure or tetrad),
- and any notes of up to 25 words.
Records sent in as PARADOX database files are fine, but not many people have the system. One of the simplest alternative input formats is comma-separated ASCII text, which can be prepared with virtually any wordprocessor as well as most databases and spreadsheets. In a wordprocessor it consists of typed entries for the nine fields, with a comma after each field entry and presented in a single row of any length. The fields have to be in the same order for each record (row). Empty fields are okay but the comma must still be entered. DO NOT USE COMMAS OR QUOTATION MARKS IN THE FIELDS - NOT EVEN IN BIRD NAMES (or the computer will take them as field separators).
There must be no hard carriage returns (ie. the ones you put from the keyboard) in a row, however long it is. The observer's name can be omitted if there are many records, all for the same observer. Grid references should be put in if possible but are not essential.
Examples are shown below:
Observer, Bird, Day, Month, Year, Place, Grid ref, Number, Notes,
A.Lister, Gannet, 2, 3, 99, Stoke Lake Guildford, TQ000500, 20, Fishing,
Common Gull, , 3, 2000, Ripley, , Up to 10, seen daily in March,
Place names should be short, no more than 30 characters including spaces, and preferably consistent with names used in the Surrey Bird Report.
Examples are:
Epsom Common, Thursley Common, Unstead S.F.
Additional detail such as 'Pine Island' etc should be put in the notes.In a spreadsheet, each record is a row, with the columns as fields. Export it as what Microsoft Excel calls CSV or send the spreadsheet.
I would welcome any records sent on disk or by e-mail in this form and would be happy to advise on other forms of presentation for records kept in databases or on spreadsheets (these may use quotation marks instead of commas but are still OK). The disks can be returned to the observer. There is no need to send a paper printout but a statement of the number of records would be a useful check.
Windows-based wordprocessors should save the file in MSDOS Text format. Windows-based spreadsheets should preferably save the file in CSV or WK1 format.
Provided the report follows the above guidelines, you can email to:
sightings@surreybirdclub.org.uk
The covering e-mail should clearly indicate the subject, to avoid being destroyed as spam. Please do NOT send them as MS WORD documents. These cannot be read into the database.
Please check for acknowledgement of receipt.
If you need a reporting form for a scarce/rare species you can download one here . Once completed please return to the County Recorder (address below).Post
The files can be mailed as 3.5 inch floppy disks (IBM format please, I cannot read Macs). The disks can be returned to the observer. There is no need to send a paper printout but a statement of the number of records would be a useful check.
Address: Jeffery J. Wheatley, Bird Recorder for Surrey, 9 Copse Edge, Elstead, Godalming, Surrey GU8 6DJ