Hi Martin, (…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1975 checklists (Condon, Schodde) and the 1977 list or recommended English names, so now it would be 2 or 3 checklists out of date.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 burunglaut07@yahoo.com ==============================
________________________________ From: Allan Richardson
Hi Martin,
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
On 20/03/2012, at 2:25 PM, Martin.O’Brien@dse.vic.gov.au wrote:
> A request for list members. > > 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 > > > > > > > > > > > > Notice: > This email and any attachments may contain information that is personal, > confidential, legally privileged and/or copyright.No part of it should be reproduced, > adapted or communicated without the prior written consent of the copyright owner. > > It is the responsibility of the recipient to check for and remove viruses. > If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender by return email, delete > it from your system and destroy any copies. You are not authorised to use, communicate or rely on the information > contained in this email. > > Please consider the environment before printing this email. > =============================== > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, > send the message: > unsubscribe > (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) > to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au > > http://birding-aus.org > ===============================
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