Calling all Oxon Birders.

We all know what a fantastic tool this blog is both for disseminating local bird information and as a gallery for some fabulous photos, however, sightings posted directly onto the Oxon Birding Blog do not make it onto the county database. Whilst studying the latter over the last few months I've noticed a number of notable bird records missing yet they appeared on this blog. I'm guessing some folk who are posting relatively full checklists directly onto this blog are assuming their records are automatically loaded onto the database. Unfortunately this is not the case.

The county database holds sightings back to 1995 and around 30 000+ records are added to it each year. Records come from a wide range of sources including OOS, BOS, Going Birding, Birdtrack, TVRC, some BTO schemes and other groups and individuals. This valuable resource is not only the core source for producing reports on birds of Oxfordshire but also provides data to government bodies, councils, developers and environmental consultants to support responses to planning applications and wildlife friendly management decisions.

All your sightings are important so please make them count by ensuring they get onto the database. For non-OOS members by far the easiest way to do this is to submit your sightings via Going Birding That way they are both uploaded to the database and are filtered onto this blog. You can tell those observers who use this method as their sightings appear as posted by Marek Walford, the founder of Going Birding.

Many thanks.

Ian Lewington (county recorder)