Records Committee Head Arne Jensen gave a presentation on the Committee’s activities for 2011- 2012. This is a copy of the text of the PowerPoint presentation. The original presentation can also be downloaded from the Club’s egroup.
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Committee Members
• Encoding – Leni Sutcliffe (coordinator), Susan Gaviano, Maia Tañedo, Tintin Telesforo, Cristina Cinco, and Felix Servita.
• Records Moderator – Arnel Telesforo
• Datebase Master and Compiler of Annual Bird Report – Jops Joseph and Arne Jensen
• Peer reviewer – Desmond Allen and Arne Jensen
• Other Members: Robert Hutchinson and Mark Jason
WBCP Records Committee
• A main task objective of WBCP is keepingand updating a Philippine database on records of wild birds.
• It is the only peer reviewed avifauna science records database in the Philippines.
• The database represents data from several sources: WBCP members, foreign trip reports, bird photographer data and observations found in science and technical project publications.
Our main functions
• Encoding bird observations
• Verifying and reviewingincoming data of unusual reports and rare bird sightings
• Establishing and updating a preliminary list of Philippine Birds
• When you submit your trip reports and random reports, this information is forwarded to the Records Committee.
• Within the committee, the members have different tasks to carry out:
–Approval of sightings
–Encoding
–Updating the database
–Generating annual reports
ACHIEVEMENTS
• The 2009 report was completed and was given to Mike for posting on Club’s website.
• We are currently working with the drafts of the 2010 and 2011 reports. The production of the annual reports has been delayed by technical glitches in the database and limited database manpower.
• We are up-to-date with the WBCP members’ bird data for 2012.
• We provided data on new and rare records of birds; and observations of large congregations of e.g. waterbirds tot he Club’s electronic Newsletter eBON
• We also posted bird data in Birding Asia magazine of the Oriental Bird Club.
Preliminary WBCP Checklist of Philippine birds
• The global checklist we are following (the Howard and Moore World Checklist) will not be finally updated anytime soon.
• We are now working on bringing the WBCP list up to date with current international nomenclature. The list will largely be based on that of the check-list of the International Ornithological Congress.
• The next revised list will include numerous new species, raised from some of those which are currently known as subspecies.
• The Committee hopes to have the list ready by the Club’s 10th anniversary in July 2013.
HIGHLIGHTS – BIRDS
• We continue to receive documented records of rare and accidentally occurring birds (less than 20 records). For example:
• Bulwer’s Petrel(Manila), White-tailed Tropicbird (Camarines Sur and Visayas), Red-tailed Tropicbird (Ifugao), White-fronted Goose (Pampanga), Gadwall (Ilocos and Batanes), Aleutian Tern2 (Visayas), and Northern Lapwing (Babuyan).
• Also new subspecies of Little Egret (nigripes) and of White Wagtail (baicaliensis)
•Astonishing congregations includes:
•Trinket’s more than 10,000 egrets and night-herons (Pangasinan); Christian and Linda’s 5,200 Black-headed Gulls (Pampanga); Arnel’s 2,400 Black-winged Stilts and 1,000+ Marsh Sandpipers (Bataan), Felix’s 2,000 Pacific Golden-Plover’s (Bicol) and my own 30,000 adults seabirds, on 15,000 m2, in Tubbataha
• Of very little known resident birds Mountain Serinfrom the extreme high elevations of Mt Apo and Kitanglad
• And the big surprise 5 Miniature Tit-Babblersfrom Samar By Ruth Fransisco. The species only known from three other localities in Mindanao and one place known to Ivan Sarenas.
• Again new bird species to the Country. From Palawan, Sierre Madre and Candaba Marsh, Luzon
• This brings the current very conservative Philippine bird list to at the least 619 species + 7 introduced species.
NEW COUNTRY RECORDS:
Short-tailed Shearwater
Siberian Thrush
Citrine Wagtail
