Tuesday, February 17, 2009

‘Sri Lanka Birds’ in the bird counting month

FOGSL conducted its annual ‘Bird Counting Month’ programme last December to assess the status of the birds of Sri Lanka. Members of the ‘Sri Lanka Birds’ web based data entry system also participated in the programme. December 2008 marked the most successful month of the system, as our members recorded the highest number of observations during the month after the launch of the system. Summary results of the analysis for December are given in this report. This analysis is based on the data downloaded on 16th February 2009. Final analysis of the ‘Bird Counting Month’ data, including the data received through other media will be published later.

Membership
A total of 15 new members have registered during the month. We warmly welcome new members to the ‘Sri Lanka Birds’ community.

Observations
Total Number of Observations 3181
Number of Species 239
Number of Endemic Species 24
Number of Proposed endemic Species 7
Number of migrant species 51

Nesting records
Number of observations 10
Number of species 7
Species (Baya Weaver, Cattle Egret, Purple-rumped Sunbird, Red-vented Bulbul, Scaly-breasted Munia, Silverbilll, White-rumped Munia)

Mostly recorded species (No: of observations)
Red-vented Bulbul (112)
Yellow-billed Babbler (99)
Common Myna (99)
House Crow (93)
White-throated Kingfisher (84)

Top five users (No: of observations)
Chandanie Wanigatunge (576)
Newton Jayawardane (558)
Salindra Kasun Dayananda (399)
Dilshan De Silva (350)
Darshana Ranatunga (247)

A total of 85 locations were visited during December by ‘Sri Lanka Birds’ members. This is the highest number of locations visited during a month after the launch of the database. As in the previous month, highest number of observations was made at Ragama (350).

Current statistics describing the number of field visits, number of observations and bird species, as well as the number of users registered in the system, are displayed on the login page of ‘Sri Lanka Birds’ - www.worldbirds.org/srilanka .

We would like to thank all the members for entering their valuable observations into Sri Lanka Birds. We highly appreciate the contributions of members towards conservation of birds through this initiative.

We wish you happy birding.

Administrator of “Sri Lanka Birds”
Field Ornithology Group of Sri Lanka

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