present: John, Neil,Ron,Mike and Martin
Activities:
- cut down some pine saplings on top heath (?), along the top from the car park, and before the ride junction
- pulled bracken wherever we went
- dug out two ponds, Rocky and one near the beeches
- cleared saplings and coppice gorse triangular area south east of bench and west of path
- cleared area along the top from bench to north boundary
- lookered both lots of ponies. 4 on south heath.
- inspected alders for coppicing near causeway
- stacked brash in wood with bench
observations:
- commas
- 2 woodlark
- heard Raven
- Kestrel
- lizard sunning on side of pine tree
- ponds nearly full again
martin
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Recording program --- freeware
Hi,
As people will have seen I record my sightings using a program which adds time and place to make things easy. The program is in tcl/tk and can in theory be run on most platforms. I run it on a Microsoft PDA.
Now you probably have to have some skills to take my source code file and to run it, but its actually not too bad. It is all free of course. Get the tcl/tk runtime, start it, and with the command 'source' run the source file given below. It uses one other file which is a text file of your chosen ordered list of birds. I give an example below.
I use a touch sensitive screen with a stylus, but you can run it totally with a directional-pad or joystick.
You can
- add dynamically species to the list
- search the list of records with regular expressions
- run commands in tcl directly
- use a clock system to get the direction of the observation
- record a distance to the bird
- add information about gender, age and behaviour
- add comments to a record
- the order of the list can be statically fixed by the user. I concatenate two lists, each in alphabetic order. One is for common species, and the other for irregular species. This makes for much faster input. I have a summer file and a winter file, of course
- converts to national grid. Very messy code.
- output to a CSV file on memory card, and a back up file on the main device, should your pda crash. Yes, windows mobile does have the odd crash.
which is pretty good since you do not leave the one static page.
here are the two files.
please consider that the code is under the gpl license.
click to download the tcl program
click to see the source code
click to see the list of birds and to download it
martin
As people will have seen I record my sightings using a program which adds time and place to make things easy. The program is in tcl/tk and can in theory be run on most platforms. I run it on a Microsoft PDA.
Now you probably have to have some skills to take my source code file and to run it, but its actually not too bad. It is all free of course. Get the tcl/tk runtime, start it, and with the command 'source' run the source file given below. It uses one other file which is a text file of your chosen ordered list of birds. I give an example below.
I use a touch sensitive screen with a stylus, but you can run it totally with a directional-pad or joystick.
You can
- add dynamically species to the list
- search the list of records with regular expressions
- run commands in tcl directly
- use a clock system to get the direction of the observation
- record a distance to the bird
- add information about gender, age and behaviour
- add comments to a record
- the order of the list can be statically fixed by the user. I concatenate two lists, each in alphabetic order. One is for common species, and the other for irregular species. This makes for much faster input. I have a summer file and a winter file, of course
- converts to national grid. Very messy code.
- output to a CSV file on memory card, and a back up file on the main device, should your pda crash. Yes, windows mobile does have the odd crash.
which is pretty good since you do not leave the one static page.
here are the two files.
please consider that the code is under the gpl license.
click to download the tcl program
click to see the source code
click to see the list of birds and to download it
martin
Saturday, August 21, 2010
summary of 2010 bird nestbox surveys
Here is a rather complicated spreadsheet of the nestboxes.
First there is a summary of the number of successes and failures
Then a sheet including all the information by nest box, listing the detail in time order
and then the three sheets of the separate surveys
23 out of the 65 boxes remained empty
34 were successful
8 were failures in either abandoning eggs or failing to complete a nest
click here to see the spreadsheet
because of the poor weather conditions, too wet or too hot there was a big gap which sometimes meant that the species was not determined
martin
First there is a summary of the number of successes and failures
Then a sheet including all the information by nest box, listing the detail in time order
and then the three sheets of the separate surveys
23 out of the 65 boxes remained empty
34 were successful
8 were failures in either abandoning eggs or failing to complete a nest
click here to see the spreadsheet
because of the poor weather conditions, too wet or too hot there was a big gap which sometimes meant that the species was not determined
martin
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
17th August 2010 ... weekly volunteers
Present: John, Neil, Ron, Mike, and Martin
Activities:
- digging bracken and birch saplings on South Heath
- lookered the 2 ponies
- filled the leaflets at the entrance
- Went to the bench, and
- dug out one of the two ponds on the area below the bench
- dug out a pond on the right of the path near the beeches
- cleared young birch and pines north of the bench
- cleared 4 Rhododendrons. Left within the brash pile of pines above the bench.
- inspected some of the coppicing of gorse along the top, which now appears to have some very small regrowth showing.
Observations:
- 2 woodlarks
- 17 mistle thrushes
- 7 Herring gulls
- stonechats
- dodder
Martin
Publish Post
Activities:
- digging bracken and birch saplings on South Heath
- lookered the 2 ponies
- filled the leaflets at the entrance
- Went to the bench, and
- dug out one of the two ponds on the area below the bench
- dug out a pond on the right of the path near the beeches
- cleared young birch and pines north of the bench
- cleared 4 Rhododendrons. Left within the brash pile of pines above the bench.
- inspected some of the coppicing of gorse along the top, which now appears to have some very small regrowth showing.
Observations:
- 2 woodlarks
- 17 mistle thrushes
- 7 Herring gulls
- stonechats
- dodder
Martin
Publish Post
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
3rd August 2010 ... weekly volunteers
Present: Neil, Ron, John
activities:
- trimmed the new posts by the causeway
- did work on Lake pond
- cleared some more pine and birch saplings north of the bench
Observations:
- failed to find the Dodder
- lots of dragonflies, including Keeled Skimmers
- Mike apparently reported a bird of prey that sounded like a Red Kite
martin
activities:
- trimmed the new posts by the causeway
- did work on Lake pond
- cleared some more pine and birch saplings north of the bench
Observations:
- failed to find the Dodder
- lots of dragonflies, including Keeled Skimmers
- Mike apparently reported a bird of prey that sounded like a Red Kite
martin
10th August 2010 ... weekly volunteers
Present: Ron, Neil, Mathew ( Ron's son) and Martin
Activities:
- lookered the ponies
- digging up bracken and silver birch on South Heath. Neil took some birch away for gardening.
- brought in the rest of the wood from the first wood pile
- cut up all the wood in the tractor shed and the stuff above
- some bags of wood taken as perks, and some added to stock in tractor shed.
- Ragwort dug up near car park
- Made a Pine branch safe opposite the high beeches. It is now further away from the path and it is clear that if the current attachment breaks it will only fall a few feet and remain hung up. It is less dangerous to leave like this, than at this moment to attempt to take it down.
- cleared the path up to the car park a little. One can get very wet walking along here.
Observations:
- meadow browns, gatekeepers
- Hobby calling from OL1
- Dodder on road opposite to the small wooden gate
- 4 of Mrs Reid's black sheep near stony pond. There is a place where they can get under the fence. Mrs Reid will be informed, but there is probably no urgency to this.
Martin
Activities:
- lookered the ponies
- digging up bracken and silver birch on South Heath. Neil took some birch away for gardening.
- brought in the rest of the wood from the first wood pile
- cut up all the wood in the tractor shed and the stuff above
- some bags of wood taken as perks, and some added to stock in tractor shed.
- Ragwort dug up near car park
- Made a Pine branch safe opposite the high beeches. It is now further away from the path and it is clear that if the current attachment breaks it will only fall a few feet and remain hung up. It is less dangerous to leave like this, than at this moment to attempt to take it down.
- cleared the path up to the car park a little. One can get very wet walking along here.
Observations:
- meadow browns, gatekeepers
- Hobby calling from OL1
- Dodder on road opposite to the small wooden gate
- 4 of Mrs Reid's black sheep near stony pond. There is a place where they can get under the fence. Mrs Reid will be informed, but there is probably no urgency to this.
Martin
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