What is a "local bird recorder"?

I'm fortunate to have been in the role of "local bird recorder" for Lothian SOC since 1 January 2011. Many people could probably imagine some of the duties that entails, but I do also come across some misapprehensions so I thought may be useful to make a few comments on the role itself. I'm distinguishing this from the sporadic comments I make covering advice to those submitting records (e.g. 2020 data), care over rare breeders and sensitive species, etc.

The duties of a bird recorder mainly concern custodianship of bird record data, compiled into a database from diverse sources and accessed for the purposes of compiling the annual local bird report and to feed into national recording schemes such as the Rare Breeding Birds report. We are currently receiving around 250k records per annum, dominated by BirdTrack and eBird data, and the Lothian SOC database now greatly exceeds 1 million records. The Scottish local recorder network constitutes our part of the *primary* bird recording framework operating in Great Britain (while RSPB, Wildlife Trusts and many other organisations maintain their own record archives) and in parallel there are many independent recording schemes (e.g. BTO BirdTrack, Cornell's eBird, iRecord, etc.). The distinction is that none of the others aim to consolidate all regional records into a comprehensive local database, with appropriate provision for rarities and sensitive species. Hence our aspiration is to provide the most comprehensive body of bird record data, maintained in full compliance with agreed recording protocols for all species, and to make it (or summaries) accessible via reports and in response to data requests. Bird recorders may also undertake fieldwork for gathering new data themselves, but in comparison with some other species groups this will inevitably be a much smaller subset of the data in most regions.

In terms of time for processing, the fact that BirdTrack and eBird each have a common format greatly reduces the workload of handling records, though both sets of downloads need work to remove extralimital records and on "validation", i.e. querying unusual records and screening out errors. We also have 5-10k records per annum coming in from each of BTO WeBS, ELCRS and iRecord which are fairly easy to integrate once naming conventions have been addressed.

The workload is significant and must be juggled with a full time job and family commitments (two teenagers at time of posting, as well as now one elderly parent needing more assistance with IT tasks, etc.). As of end July 2023 I am struggling a bit and well have over 150 items on my birds "To do" list, though some of those are fairly easy jobs or annual tasks, but including 10+ jobs in the 10+ hours category and 20+ in the 1-10 hours category. New tasks keep appearing. Of course some of these are personal choices, like logging ring reads from gulls, doing my BBS plot or responding to ID queries on facebook groups (I now seem to be the main person answering queries on SOC Birdwatching for Beginners which is a national level group?), but they are what I currently have on my plate. I manage to reply to most emails and queries on ID forums fairly promptly, but certainly not all, and some may wonder why I fail to respond in a timely manner and I appreciate the frustration caused by delays. I will eventually get to things but some I have to "park" so as to systematically work down a list of priorities. Because of this I freely admit I am very poor at open-ended tasks with no rigid deadline, i.e. "when you can"; before working on any task I need to decide "is it absoultely essential to do this today?" as there will be other things that are already critical, and I have a parallel set for work, which is unremitting.

Due to lack of time and for environmental reasons I now do essentially all birding locally, by bike or en route on local travel. Since atlas fieldwork 2007-13 my only other birding trips are either for monthly WeBS in East Lothian or annual BBS at Whitekirk, e.g. I last got to Musselburgh lagoons in 2010 and "down the coast" to Barns Ness in 2009. I don't travel to see rare birds. There is no truth in the statement I have seen made on occasion: "the only (other) people to see the bird were the county recorder and his mates". In reality I have only been getting out one day in two, post COVID, invariably at dusk after work commitments (hence much reduced in winter) and I mainly target gulls (and terns in season) gathering to roost. Despite constraints, in conjunction with Billy (who is normally out daily, weather permitting), we have logged over 5k ring reads on patch, spanning terns (2.5k+), gulls (1.5k+, of which nearly 500 Norwegian), Shags (700+) and a few others including swans and waders, over the last decade or so. Managing these submissions can also be time-consuming, though some like Norwegian gulls and Netherlands terns have online reporting mechanisms which are very efficient and welcome. We are still hoping the promised colour-ring reporting portal for UK schemes will become available, which may reduce the need for lots of individual emails.

I hope to get more on top of things soon, meanwhile I sincerely thank those who assist me in the role by supplying data of various sorts, particularly those who take the initiative to log their description species without the need for me to chase up...

Pic: Med Gull white-32A4 as of August 2012 when still a youngster: