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Hi Alasdair– greetings from parallel Lancaster!
The club is currently working to provide data on land it deems ‘functionally linked’ to Morecambe Bay SPA– ie used by species that make the bay special in a conservation sense.
We’ve been getting as precise as we can (to field level where possible) so we’ve been devising maps which split up key areas for wetland bird species. I’ve been sorting through / winkling out Aldcliffe data from the last ten years and have divvied up what we might call Aldcliffe into 23 fields or clusters ie A1 to A23. For instance, A2 is Freeman’s Pools and A14 is the field that contains ‘The Flood’ just N of the foot of Aldcliffe Hall Lane.
Every time records are placed on this site Rosie (hi Rosie!) and others assimilate, interpret and cut and paste to a database which forms the backbone of the annual reports and other projects. At the moment we’re on a drive to up our data quality.
So for example if a developer asks us which records we have for a relatively obscure spot because they wish to build houses on ‘X43’ we can pull out our relevant records more easily and with added confidence.
I mentioned to Rosie that I would trial a system for my frequent Aldcliffe records and she welcomed the idea as it would her save time and head-scratching when transferring data from the site to the database.
At the moment it’s just between me and her but I plan to devise / upload a map of the Aldcliffe area which will reveal all– and which could be adopted as a recording system by others. There are familiar hotspots like the Wildfowlers Pools but also lots of nooks and crannies and near-identical fields so perhaps next time we have a Tundra Bean Goose at ‘Aldcliffe’ and someone asks yes but where exactly? we might reply ‘A5’ and both know what’s what.
Re: missing birds no two visitors to any site find or indeed record exactly the same thing and these sites can be quite dynamic: ‘You should’ve been here five minutes ago!’.
I’ve had 20+ years of practice of getting the most out of each trip to Aldcliffe and I still miss stuff. I’m very familiar and think I know what to look / listen out for– and where. Perhaps me and / or others could do a guided outing when restrictions allow. Would you be interested? The club committee is currently looking to see how the society can benefit our members, the wider community and the base of knowledge we’re acquiring from being in the field since 1959!