3 Waxwing heard and seen high in trees on St Giles in Oxford City Centre
(per Jarrod Hadfield)
Mapping Waxwings
The last time we had a waxwing winter I was keen to understand more about the patterns of their arrival in Oxfordshire and their and movements once they were here. It looks like we are set for another Waxwing winter and I was wondering if birders with smartphones would like to try out a crowd survey and mapping app called EpiCollect http://www.epicollect.net/
EpiCollect is a web-application that allows anyone to build survey forms that can be downloaded onto a smartphone. I have created a survey form and web site titled ‘WaxwingsOx’ http://epicollectserver.appspot.com/project.html?name=WaxwingsOx
Marston Waxwing (c) The Paranoid Birder
To take part simply download the Epicollect app from either the Apple App store or Android Market (There are links from EpiCollect web-page if these don’t appear from a search). On opening the App, go to settings and type ‘WaxwingsOx’ into the box labeled ‘Project’. In settings enter your email and also set ‘Update forms’ to ‘ON’ (as some of you may have suggestions on improvements to the form). The form will download to your smartphone. When you see Waxwings click on ‘New Entry’. The date, time and location are entered automatically. This is great but it also means that you can’t enter sightings after the event. You can also add photo if you wish (e.g. of feeding bushes). From the app menu “Display Map” will plot everyone’s or your own sightings on a googlemap interface. All the data can be downloaded and passed onto the county recorders.I should confess that I am new to EpiCollect so this will be an experiment for all! However, EpiCollect is increasingly being used for all sorts on wildlife surveys and if we liked it we could use it for other species that interest us and for which we’d enjoy a constantly up-dated map of their occurrence.
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