Recording
Recording Birds
The Club produces an Annual Report of bird observations within our recording area. Traditionally this area was designated as within a nominal 10 mile radius from Newbury Museum. In practice many places visited over the years are significantly further than this; some move county following boundary changes in the 1970s. The diagram shows the notional reporting area related to Ordnance Survey 10 kilometre squares. It includes parts of Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and North Hampshire and extends eastwards to the A340 and the A329, Buttermere and Chilton Foliat to the west and Upper Lambourn, Bury/Cow Down and Churn on the Berkshire Downs to the north.
We encourage all members (and non-members) to submit their observations via one of the following (in order of preference):
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The British Trust for Ornithology’s (BTO) BirdTrack: The BTO extract records for our whole recording area, rather than just by county also this avoids reliance on the county clubs (some will not provide records). This has the advantage of being readily available. [link to site]
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BerksBirds: The reporting website of the Berkshire Ornithological Club (BOC) [link to site]. Here are the submission guidelines [link to site]. Alternatively they can be submitted directly to BOC or Hampshire Ornithological Club. Records submitted this way results in a delay until May.
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eBird
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Complete an NDOC spreadsheet: Contact the club to receive a copy by email.
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Written submission: send as soon as possible but not later than July of the following year. Please use the website enquiry form for details of where to send written records, or send to Lesley at the address in your latest newsletter.
NDOC are interested in all records, not just rare ones. Declines in common species such as House Sparrow, Blackbird for example, would perhaps not be noticed until numbers dropped so dramatically for it to be obvious. All records are kept on the database for future analysis should it be required.
Rare Birds
We remind observers that it is the responsibility of the observer to supply descriptions, photographs etc of rare birds to the Rarities Committees as appropriate. The list of species requiring supporting evidence can be found on each of the county websites: