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Note: this dataset description is metadata (data about data) which describes the actual dataset in accordance with the ANZLIC (Australia New Zealand Land Information Council) Core Metadata Guidelines Version 2 (February 2001)
ANZLIC unique identifier: ANZCW1003100005
Title: Bird sightings at 160 Cowper Street Goulburn NSW Australia (1997-2000)
Custodian: IndexGeo Pty Ltd
Jurisdiction: Australia
List of species names of birds that visit our backyard home garden. Casual observations produce a simple listing of bird species names seen each month. The observations include both Australian native species and introduced species.
Datasets such as this should provide useful presence data for certain scientific study, local wildlife conservation, and catchment management.
The species list is presented as a collection of HTML documents. There is an introduction document with a site description, the bird identification method, and the summary species list. There is a separate document for each year, listing the common name, scientific name, and monthly presence. The summary species list has links to other resources about that species, such as: photographs, images, descriptions, bird calls.
See the Completeness section below.
- FAUNA Native conservation
- FAUNA Native inventory
- FAUNA Native monitoring
- FAUNA Exotic inventory
- FAUNA Exotic monitoring
- ECOLOGY
Geographic bounding box:
The bounding box encloses the maximum extents of the dataset. There may be voids or gaps within the bounding box, depending on the defined coverage of the dataset. Outer bounding rectangle as Latitude/Longitude coordinates based on the WGS84 datum (expressed as both Degrees Minutes Seconds and as decimal Degrees):
- North bounding latitude: 34 44 52.8 S (-34.748)
- South bounding latitude: 34 44 52.8 S (-34.748)
- East bounding longitude: 149 43 51.6 E (149.731)
- West bounding longitude: 149 43 51.6 E (149.731)
Lineage:
The initial version of the web pages had a separate species listing for each month. That was cumbersome to manage (and web crawlers were listing every separate page). So, as from January 2000, there is a yearly listing with a simple monthly table. This brings all the old monthly data into the yearly listings.
Positional accuracy:
The latitude/longitude of the point locality at "Goulburn, New South Wales" was determined using the on-line facility "AUSLIG Place Names Search" which utilises the "Gazetteer of Australia". The site is approximately 500m west of the Goulburn Post Office. The approximate offset was calculated and the co-ordinates were adjusted accordingly.
Attribute accuracy:
Bird identification is derived by a lay-person using the following reference books:
- "Australian Birds - Simply Classified".
- Donald and Molly Trounson.
- 4th Edition, 1996
- National Book Distributors and Publishers, Sydney Australia.
- ISBN 1 86436 241 3
- "A Field Guide to Australian Birds".
- Peter Slater.
- Volume One and Volume Two, 1983.
- Toppan Printing Co. (HK) Ltd., Hong Kong.
- ISBN 0 85179 102 6, ISBN 0 85179 813 6.
Prior to October 1998 we were providing a little assorted seed until we phased out all feeding. This would have swayed the accuracy of the species list for those early records. Now the main attractions are more natural, such as native flora species and a reliable supply of clean fresh water.
Logical consistency:
The yearly bird sighting data is stored as an HTML table with a consistent layout. Similarly the index page has a summary species table. This would enable the species data to be automatically extracted by a parser. Each species name in the yearly listings has a hypertext link back to the summary species table. Hyperlinks are automatically verified every month to ensure the consistency of the set of documents.
Completeness:
Casual observations throughout the month. Any notable gap of observations is indicated on the relevant monthly page.
We ceased recording observations at end of December 2000 and changed the title of the dataset to indicate the range of relevant years (i.e. 1997-2000).
The actual dataset is available at:
This dataset description complies with ANZLIC Core Metadata Guidelines Version 2 (February 2001) and XML DTD ANZMETA 1.3 (metadata validation date: 2002-12-07)