Re: [nysbirds-l] Four-letter Codes for Birds

[Robert Paxton]

Hi Mike Cooper at al.,
Re the three-digit numbers, the ABA didn't create them - it proposed to use
the numbers in the AOU (now AOS) check list, which could be one-digit (e.g.
Western Grebe, AOU #1), two-digit, or three-digit numbers (e.g. Java
Sparrow, AOU #813). They could all be made three-digit numbers by padding
the short ones with preliminary zeros. But that didn't take.
  Yrs.,
   Bob Paxton

On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 11:15 AM Mike  wrote:

> While I don’t remember the Birdwatcher’s Digest article that Shai refers
> to, there was an article in N.A Bird Bander from 1978 which proposed a four
> letter code pretty much like the one used today.
> https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/nabb/v003n01/p0016-p0025.pdf
>
> I also remember a stretch of time when the ABA tried assigning a (3
> digit?) number to each species.
> Mike Cooper
> Ridge
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 23, 2021, at 9:15 AM, Shaibal Mitra 
> wrote:
>
> When Rich posted yesterday, I was anxiously awaiting any news at all
> from him and read it immediately on the basis of the sender's name,
> regardless of the subject line. I and many others appreciated his efforts
> to re-find the Violent Green Swallow in the cold and wind. That said, the
> "RWSW" in the subject line caught my eye. I haven't seen that code since I
> finally tore myself away from it in the late 80s or 90s, but my old
> childhood notebooks contain many such entries, prior to the standardization
> of four-letter codes and the splitting of the Rough-winged Swallow complex
> into several species, including our NRWS. I'm guessing that Rich's use of
> codes goes back at least that far, and that his typo dates him to the
> earliest years of this expedience.
>
> I vividly remember my first exposure to the idea of four-letter codes for
> birds: an article in Bird Watcher's Digest around 1981. I thought it was a
> great idea and adopted it in my own notes immediately. My early notebooks
> need a little tlc to interpret: my "BWWA" meant Black-and-white Warbler, a
> super-familiar species that nested behind my house, rather than Blue-winged
> Warbler, which took me a couple of years to find in its much lower numbers
> and more localized breeding sites within biking distance of my house. When
> I finally found my first Blue-winged Warblers in the Great Swamp, I
> realized I had a problem. Ditto for my discovery of a colony of Bank
> Swallows at the Plains Road super fund site, which was accomplished only
> after a couple of notebooks were filled with "BASW," referring to the
> ubiquitous, chirpy, long-tailed one.
>
> Anyway, I'd like to commend the use of four-letter codes, not just for
> note-taking, but for efficiently navigating eBird. Standard codes work in
> eBird for any search at the species level, and, in certain kinds of
> navigation, down to subspecies level, for those that have codes assigned
> (e.g. searching media for "YPWA" brings up photos and recordings of Yellow
> Palm Warbler). This last observation reminds me of a significant and
> largely under-appreciated virtue of four-letter codes. Fluency in them will
> teach you a lot about taxonomy and field-identifiability at the subspecies
> and superspecies levels. Subspecies that have been assigned codes are those
> that are distinctive enough that banders are expected to be able to
> distinguish and record them as such. So why not birders, too? In fact, many
> of the codes that were initially applied to distinctive subspecies, such as
> "ETTI" (vs. Black-crested Titmouse), have since been split. In other cases,
> it was enlightening to learn that I wasn't supposed to use "WIFL" when
> banding the locally common breeding Empid, because of difficulties in
> distinguishing it from "ALFL" i
>
> --
> *NYSbirds-L List Info:*
> Welcome and Basics 
> Rules and Information 
> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave
> 
> *Archives:*
> The Mail Archive
> 
> Surfbirds 
> ABA 
> *Please submit your observations to **eBird*
> *!*
> --
>

--

NYSbirds-L List Info:
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm

ARCHIVES:
1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html
2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L
3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01

Please submit your observations to eBird:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

--

Re: [nysbirds-l] Four-letter Codes for Birds

[Robert Paxton]

Hi Mike Cooper at al.,
Re the three-digit numbers, the ABA didn't create them - it proposed to use
the numbers in the AOU (now AOS) check list, which could be one-digit (e.g.
Western Grebe, AOU #1), two-digit, or three-digit numbers (e.g. Java
Sparrow, AOU #813). They could all be made three-digit numbers by padding
the short ones with preliminary zeros. But that didn't take.
  Yrs.,
   Bob Paxton

On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 11:15 AM Mike  wrote:

> While I don’t remember the Birdwatcher’s Digest article that Shai refers
> to, there was an article in N.A Bird Bander from 1978 which proposed a four
> letter code pretty much like the one used today.
> https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/nabb/v003n01/p0016-p0025.pdf
>
> I also remember a stretch of time when the ABA tried assigning a (3
> digit?) number to each species.
> Mike Cooper
> Ridge
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Apr 23, 2021, at 9:15 AM, Shaibal Mitra 
> wrote:
>
> When Rich posted yesterday, I was anxiously awaiting any news at all
> from him and read it immediately on the basis of the sender's name,
> regardless of the subject line. I and many others appreciated his efforts
> to re-find the Violent Green Swallow in the cold and wind. That said, the
> "RWSW" in the subject line caught my eye. I haven't seen that code since I
> finally tore myself away from it in the late 80s or 90s, but my old
> childhood notebooks contain many such entries, prior to the standardization
> of four-letter codes and the splitting of the Rough-winged Swallow complex
> into several species, including our NRWS. I'm guessing that Rich's use of
> codes goes back at least that far, and that his typo dates him to the
> earliest years of this expedience.
>
> I vividly remember my first exposure to the idea of four-letter codes for
> birds: an article in Bird Watcher's Digest around 1981. I thought it was a
> great idea and adopted it in my own notes immediately. My early notebooks
> need a little tlc to interpret: my "BWWA" meant Black-and-white Warbler, a
> super-familiar species that nested behind my house, rather than Blue-winged
> Warbler, which took me a couple of years to find in its much lower numbers
> and more localized breeding sites within biking distance of my house. When
> I finally found my first Blue-winged Warblers in the Great Swamp, I
> realized I had a problem. Ditto for my discovery of a colony of Bank
> Swallows at the Plains Road super fund site, which was accomplished only
> after a couple of notebooks were filled with "BASW," referring to the
> ubiquitous, chirpy, long-tailed one.
>
> Anyway, I'd like to commend the use of four-letter codes, not just for
> note-taking, but for efficiently navigating eBird. Standard codes work in
> eBird for any search at the species level, and, in certain kinds of
> navigation, down to subspecies level, for those that have codes assigned
> (e.g. searching media for "YPWA" brings up photos and recordings of Yellow
> Palm Warbler). This last observation reminds me of a significant and
> largely under-appreciated virtue of four-letter codes. Fluency in them will
> teach you a lot about taxonomy and field-identifiability at the subspecies
> and superspecies levels. Subspecies that have been assigned codes are those
> that are distinctive enough that banders are expected to be able to
> distinguish and record them as such. So why not birders, too? In fact, many
> of the codes that were initially applied to distinctive subspecies, such as
> "ETTI" (vs. Black-crested Titmouse), have since been split. In other cases,
> it was enlightening to learn that I wasn't supposed to use "WIFL" when
> banding the locally common breeding Empid, because of difficulties in
> distinguishing it from "ALFL" i
>
> --
> *NYSbirds-L List Info:*
> Welcome and Basics 
> Rules and Information 
> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave
> 
> *Archives:*
> The Mail Archive
> 
> Surfbirds 
> ABA 
> *Please submit your observations to **eBird*
> *!*
> --
>

--

NYSbirds-L List Info:
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm

ARCHIVES:
1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html
2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L
3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01

Please submit your observations to eBird:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

--

Re: [nysbirds-l] Four-letter Codes for Birds

[Mike]

While I don’t remember the Birdwatcher’s Digest article that Shai refers to, 
there was an article in N.A Bird Bander from 1978 which proposed a four letter 
code pretty much like the one used today.  
https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/nabb/v003n01/p0016-p0025.pdf

I also remember a stretch of time when the ABA tried assigning a (3 digit?) 
number to each species.  
Mike Cooper
Ridge

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 23, 2021, at 9:15 AM, Shaibal Mitra  wrote:
> 
> When Rich posted yesterday, I was anxiously awaiting any news at all from 
> him and read it immediately on the basis of the sender's name, regardless of 
> the subject line. I and many others appreciated his efforts to re-find the 
> Violent Green Swallow in the cold and wind. That said, the "RWSW" in the 
> subject line caught my eye. I haven't seen that code since I finally tore 
> myself away from it in the late 80s or 90s, but my old childhood notebooks 
> contain many such entries, prior to the standardization of four-letter codes 
> and the splitting of the Rough-winged Swallow complex into several species, 
> including our NRWS. I'm guessing that Rich's use of codes goes back at least 
> that far, and that his typo dates him to the earliest years of this 
> expedience.
> 
> I vividly remember my first exposure to the idea of four-letter codes for 
> birds: an article in Bird Watcher's Digest around 1981. I thought it was a 
> great idea and adopted it in my own notes immediately. My early notebooks 
> need a little tlc to interpret: my "BWWA" meant Black-and-white Warbler, a 
> super-familiar species that nested behind my house, rather than Blue-winged 
> Warbler, which took me a couple of years to find in its much lower numbers 
> and more localized breeding sites within biking distance of my house. When I 
> finally found my first Blue-winged Warblers in the Great Swamp, I realized I 
> had a problem. Ditto for my discovery of a colony of Bank Swallows at the 
> Plains Road super fund site, which was accomplished only after a couple of 
> notebooks were filled with "BASW," referring to the ubiquitous, chirpy, 
> long-tailed one.
> 
> Anyway, I'd like to commend the use of four-letter codes, not just for 
> note-taking, but for efficiently navigating eBird. Standard codes work in 
> eBird for any search at the species level, and, in certain kinds of 
> navigation, down to subspecies level, for those that have codes assigned 
> (e.g. searching media for "YPWA" brings up photos and recordings of Yellow 
> Palm Warbler). This last observation reminds me of a significant and largely 
> under-appreciated virtue of four-letter codes. Fluency in them will teach you 
> a lot about taxonomy and field-identifiability at the subspecies and 
> superspecies levels. Subspecies that have been assigned codes are those that 
> are distinctive enough that banders are expected to be able to distinguish 
> and record them as such. So why not birders, too? In fact, many of the codes 
> that were initially applied to distinctive subspecies, such as "ETTI" (vs. 
> Black-crested Titmouse), have since been split. In other cases, it was 
> enlightening to learn that I wasn't supposed to use "WIFL" when banding the 
> locally common breeding Empid, because of difficulties in distinguishing it 
> from "ALFL" i

--

NYSbirds-L List Info:
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm

ARCHIVES:
1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html
2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L
3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01

Please submit your observations to eBird:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

--

Re: [nysbirds-l] Four-letter Codes for Birds

[Mike]

While I don’t remember the Birdwatcher’s Digest article that Shai refers to, 
there was an article in N.A Bird Bander from 1978 which proposed a four letter 
code pretty much like the one used today.  
https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/nabb/v003n01/p0016-p0025.pdf

I also remember a stretch of time when the ABA tried assigning a (3 digit?) 
number to each species.  
Mike Cooper
Ridge

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 23, 2021, at 9:15 AM, Shaibal Mitra  wrote:
> 
> When Rich posted yesterday, I was anxiously awaiting any news at all from 
> him and read it immediately on the basis of the sender's name, regardless of 
> the subject line. I and many others appreciated his efforts to re-find the 
> Violent Green Swallow in the cold and wind. That said, the "RWSW" in the 
> subject line caught my eye. I haven't seen that code since I finally tore 
> myself away from it in the late 80s or 90s, but my old childhood notebooks 
> contain many such entries, prior to the standardization of four-letter codes 
> and the splitting of the Rough-winged Swallow complex into several species, 
> including our NRWS. I'm guessing that Rich's use of codes goes back at least 
> that far, and that his typo dates him to the earliest years of this 
> expedience.
> 
> I vividly remember my first exposure to the idea of four-letter codes for 
> birds: an article in Bird Watcher's Digest around 1981. I thought it was a 
> great idea and adopted it in my own notes immediately. My early notebooks 
> need a little tlc to interpret: my "BWWA" meant Black-and-white Warbler, a 
> super-familiar species that nested behind my house, rather than Blue-winged 
> Warbler, which took me a couple of years to find in its much lower numbers 
> and more localized breeding sites within biking distance of my house. When I 
> finally found my first Blue-winged Warblers in the Great Swamp, I realized I 
> had a problem. Ditto for my discovery of a colony of Bank Swallows at the 
> Plains Road super fund site, which was accomplished only after a couple of 
> notebooks were filled with "BASW," referring to the ubiquitous, chirpy, 
> long-tailed one.
> 
> Anyway, I'd like to commend the use of four-letter codes, not just for 
> note-taking, but for efficiently navigating eBird. Standard codes work in 
> eBird for any search at the species level, and, in certain kinds of 
> navigation, down to subspecies level, for those that have codes assigned 
> (e.g. searching media for "YPWA" brings up photos and recordings of Yellow 
> Palm Warbler). This last observation reminds me of a significant and largely 
> under-appreciated virtue of four-letter codes. Fluency in them will teach you 
> a lot about taxonomy and field-identifiability at the subspecies and 
> superspecies levels. Subspecies that have been assigned codes are those that 
> are distinctive enough that banders are expected to be able to distinguish 
> and record them as such. So why not birders, too? In fact, many of the codes 
> that were initially applied to distinctive subspecies, such as "ETTI" (vs. 
> Black-crested Titmouse), have since been split. In other cases, it was 
> enlightening to learn that I wasn't supposed to use "WIFL" when banding the 
> locally common breeding Empid, because of difficulties in distinguishing it 
> from "ALFL" i

--

NYSbirds-L List Info:
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm

ARCHIVES:
1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html
2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L
3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01

Please submit your observations to eBird:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

--

[nysbirds-l] Four-letter Codes for Birds

[Shaibal Mitra]

When Rich posted yesterday, I was anxiously awaiting any news at all from him 
and read it immediately on the basis of the sender's name, regardless of the 
subject line. I and many others appreciated his efforts to re-find the Violent 
Green Swallow in the cold and wind. That said, the "RWSW" in the subject line 
caught my eye. I haven't seen that code since I finally tore myself away from 
it in the late 80s or 90s, but my old childhood notebooks contain many such 
entries, prior to the standardization of four-letter codes and the splitting of 
the Rough-winged Swallow complex into several species, including our NRWS. I'm 
guessing that Rich's use of codes goes back at least that far, and that his 
typo dates him to the earliest years of this expedience.

I vividly remember my first exposure to the idea of four-letter codes for 
birds: an article in Bird Watcher's Digest around 1981. I thought it was a 
great idea and adopted it in my own notes immediately. My early notebooks need 
a little tlc to interpret: my "BWWA" meant Black-and-white Warbler, a 
super-familiar species that nested behind my house, rather than Blue-winged 
Warbler, which took me a couple of years to find in its much lower numbers and 
more localized breeding sites within biking distance of my house. When I 
finally found my first Blue-winged Warblers in the Great Swamp, I realized I 
had a problem. Ditto for my discovery of a colony of Bank Swallows at the 
Plains Road super fund site, which was accomplished only after a couple of 
notebooks were filled with "BASW," referring to the ubiquitous, chirpy, 
long-tailed one.

Anyway, I'd like to commend the use of four-letter codes, not just for 
note-taking, but for efficiently navigating eBird. Standard codes work in eBird 
for any search at the species level, and, in certain kinds of navigation, down 
to subspecies level, for those that have codes assigned (e.g. searching media 
for "YPWA" brings up photos and recordings of Yellow Palm Warbler). This last 
observation reminds me of a significant and largely under-appreciated virtue of 
four-letter codes. Fluency in them will teach you a lot about taxonomy and 
field-identifiability at the subspecies and superspecies levels. Subspecies 
that have been assigned codes are those that are distinctive enough that 
banders are expected to be able to distinguish and record them as such. So why 
not birders, too? In fact, many of the codes that were initially applied to 
distinctive subspecies, such as "ETTI" (vs. Black-crested Titmouse), have since 
been split. In other cases, it was enlightening to learn that I wasn't supposed 
to use "WIFL" when banding the locally common breeding Empid, because of 
difficulties in distinguishing it from "ALFL" in the hand, when these birds 
simply refuse to sing and were coded collectively as TRFL (Traill's 
Flycatcher). This challenged me to seek reliable visual features to distinguish 
them, which I believe I have been able to do, in large part.

If anybody has old issues of Bird Watcher's Digest (or superior hacking skills) 
and could share that forty year-old article with me, I'd appreciate it. The way 
I remember it, the proposal wasn't originally geared toward banding, but toward 
ease of field-recording and simplicity of computer entry (at that time, via 
Atari 800 for me).

Shai Mitra
Bay Shore
--

NYSbirds-L List Info:
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm

ARCHIVES:
1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html
2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L
3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01

Please submit your observations to eBird:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

--

[nysbirds-l] Four-letter Codes for Birds

[Shaibal Mitra]

When Rich posted yesterday, I was anxiously awaiting any news at all from him 
and read it immediately on the basis of the sender's name, regardless of the 
subject line. I and many others appreciated his efforts to re-find the Violent 
Green Swallow in the cold and wind. That said, the "RWSW" in the subject line 
caught my eye. I haven't seen that code since I finally tore myself away from 
it in the late 80s or 90s, but my old childhood notebooks contain many such 
entries, prior to the standardization of four-letter codes and the splitting of 
the Rough-winged Swallow complex into several species, including our NRWS. I'm 
guessing that Rich's use of codes goes back at least that far, and that his 
typo dates him to the earliest years of this expedience.

I vividly remember my first exposure to the idea of four-letter codes for 
birds: an article in Bird Watcher's Digest around 1981. I thought it was a 
great idea and adopted it in my own notes immediately. My early notebooks need 
a little tlc to interpret: my "BWWA" meant Black-and-white Warbler, a 
super-familiar species that nested behind my house, rather than Blue-winged 
Warbler, which took me a couple of years to find in its much lower numbers and 
more localized breeding sites within biking distance of my house. When I 
finally found my first Blue-winged Warblers in the Great Swamp, I realized I 
had a problem. Ditto for my discovery of a colony of Bank Swallows at the 
Plains Road super fund site, which was accomplished only after a couple of 
notebooks were filled with "BASW," referring to the ubiquitous, chirpy, 
long-tailed one.

Anyway, I'd like to commend the use of four-letter codes, not just for 
note-taking, but for efficiently navigating eBird. Standard codes work in eBird 
for any search at the species level, and, in certain kinds of navigation, down 
to subspecies level, for those that have codes assigned (e.g. searching media 
for "YPWA" brings up photos and recordings of Yellow Palm Warbler). This last 
observation reminds me of a significant and largely under-appreciated virtue of 
four-letter codes. Fluency in them will teach you a lot about taxonomy and 
field-identifiability at the subspecies and superspecies levels. Subspecies 
that have been assigned codes are those that are distinctive enough that 
banders are expected to be able to distinguish and record them as such. So why 
not birders, too? In fact, many of the codes that were initially applied to 
distinctive subspecies, such as "ETTI" (vs. Black-crested Titmouse), have since 
been split. In other cases, it was enlightening to learn that I wasn't supposed 
to use "WIFL" when banding the locally common breeding Empid, because of 
difficulties in distinguishing it from "ALFL" in the hand, when these birds 
simply refuse to sing and were coded collectively as TRFL (Traill's 
Flycatcher). This challenged me to seek reliable visual features to distinguish 
them, which I believe I have been able to do, in large part.

If anybody has old issues of Bird Watcher's Digest (or superior hacking skills) 
and could share that forty year-old article with me, I'd appreciate it. The way 
I remember it, the proposal wasn't originally geared toward banding, but toward 
ease of field-recording and simplicity of computer entry (at that time, via 
Atari 800 for me).

Shai Mitra
Bay Shore
--

NYSbirds-L List Info:
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES.htm
http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm

ARCHIVES:
1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html
2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L
3) http://birding.aba.org/maillist/NY01

Please submit your observations to eBird:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/

--