Posted by Jim DeWitt on October 24, 2011 at 1:06 PM
There's a nice article in the current issue of North American Birding on banding codes. I think the consensus is not to use them in the NPN forums, but if you are keeping lists, even to match against photos, they are extremely useful. Would you rather write "Black and White Warbler" or "BAWW" when you are in a hurry?
Posted by Richard Ditch on October 24, 2011 at 4:51 PM
I also strongly discourage their use in any public forum such as a birding listserv. I agree they can be quite handy in personal record-keeping, and even among a small group of people like banders working with a familiar and limited set of species.
Where the problem always comes up is in expanding the four letter acronyms (FLAC's) back to the original species names - if you are dealing with an unfamiliar species (especially if you are reading a report from some other part of the country) in can be difficult to reconstitute the name.
Rules for creating FLAC's seem simple at first, but they run into issues when "collisions" occur between the names of two species (e.g. Black-throated Green Warbler and Black-throated Gray Warbler) and exception rules get introduced. To work back up to the full name keep in mind that a species name might have only one component (Anhinga, Verdin), two components (House Finch, Song Sparrow), three components (Great Blue Heron), or even four components (Northern Rough-winged Swallow).
For the AZ/NM birding listserv I've recommended that if people wish to use FLAC's for their own convenience that they install an application such as TypeIt4Me that can expand these codes into complete names before sharing them with others.
Discussion
1 repliesHere's the full link:
http://www.nabirding.com/2011/03/11/birder-shorthand-demystifying-the-code-of-banders/
Where the problem always comes up is in expanding the four letter acronyms (FLAC's) back to the original species names - if you are dealing with an unfamiliar species (especially if you are reading a report from some other part of the country) in can be difficult to reconstitute the name.
Rules for creating FLAC's seem simple at first, but they run into issues when "collisions" occur between the names of two species (e.g. Black-throated Green Warbler and Black-throated Gray Warbler) and exception rules get introduced. To work back up to the full name keep in mind that a species name might have only one component (Anhinga, Verdin), two components (House Finch, Song Sparrow), three components (Great Blue Heron), or even four components (Northern Rough-winged Swallow).
For the AZ/NM birding listserv I've recommended that if people wish to use FLAC's for their own convenience that they install an application such as TypeIt4Me that can expand these codes into complete names before sharing them with others.