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As Australia's foremost bird conservation organisation, Birds Australia has co-ordinated many different bird-monitoring projects, and this has resulted in the creation of a variety of databases. The data from most of these are accessible to researchers for a small fee, and have a myriad of uses in terns of conservation and ecological studies.
Databases from Ongoing Projects
Comprising millions of records, collected from every one-degree grid in Australia since 1998, this database is simply phenomenal. It is one of the largest wildlife databases generated in a single country anywhere in the world, with records of nearly 800 species of birds. Gathered by thousands of volunteer birdwatchers, it has countless applications for researchers, reflecting population and distributional trends which are applicable to the conservation of individual species or entire suites of birds.
This is Birds Australia's longest-running bird monitoring project, with some information dating back to the 1960s. The database contains breeding data for hundreds of species of birds, including details of every aspect of breeding, such as dates, clutch sizes and descriptions of nests and eggs, as well as technical details including the dimensions of nests, the height of the nest and the height of the nest-tree it is in. The NRS provides an invaluable record of bird breeding over a period of decades which allows researchers to not only study certain species intensively, but also to compare different facets of breeding over time to see if they have changed, an important component of detecting the effects of climate change, for example.
This database integrates the results of over 20 years of shorebird-monitoring surveys at known sites throughout Australia. Population trends of migratory shorebirds in Australia often reflect the effects of what is going on elsewhere in the world, both in their breeding grounds in the Northern Hemisphere and also along the flyway used during migration. This is a vital tool for understanding shorebird ecology and is essential for shorebird conservation.
Databases from Previous Projects
Historical Atlas of Australian Birds
Collected during the first Atlas period between 1977 and 1981, this database houses millions of records of birds gathered from every one-degree grid in Australia. It provides a snap-shot of the distribution of 656 species of birds during that time. When viewed in conjunction with the ongoing Atlas of Australian Birds, it provides a valuable comparison which allows researchers to determine changes in the distribution and reporting rates of many species. Further, it also contains the results of an extensive literature search which provide historical distributional data for 40 species (in the periods before 1901, 1901-1950, 1951-1976), allowing for further comparisons over time.
Australian Bird Count
This database contains details of the bird monitoring project that was billed as 'the Atlas with numbers' and was compiled between 1989 and 1995. A total of 952 volunteers went birdwatching at 1681 sites throughout Australia, recording how many birds of each species they saw during nearly 79,000 20-minute, 2-hectare surveys. As surveys were conducted at least four times a year at each site, a tremendous dataset was assembled, revealing the seasonal movements of our bush birds in many different regions.
 BOP Watch
Between 1986 and 1990, 271 volunteers conducted over 25,000 roadside surveys to record the numbers of 24 species of diurnal raptors throughout Australia, with nearly 4 million kilometers travelled. The resulting database records details of distribution and relative abundance of each species, and researchers are able to use this information to detect trends of seasonal movements in different regions, as well as other factors which may influence their distribution. One such analysis was published as a Birds Australia Report. A second set of surveys was conducted between 1996 and 2000 to gauge the effects of the introduction of the Rabbit Calicivirus Disease, as well as to record the distribution and relative abundance of raptors. The results of this second phase of the study are also available on a database at Birds Australia.
Murray-Darling Basin Waterbird Survey
The results of this project were collected between 1994 and 1998. Surveys were conducted by volunteers to identify wetlands which are vital breeding sites and drought refuges. The database contains records of about 100 species of waterbirds, including data on their numbers and seasonality. This is a vital tool in understanding the ecology of waterbirds in Australia's largest and most important river drainage basin.
Victorian Wetlands Survey
This survey, co-ordinated by the BA Victorian Regional Group, resulted in over 400 wetlands throughout Victoria being surveyed for waterbirds between 1987 and 1992, with data from over 4500 surveys stored in the database. This provides another important tool in our understanding of waterfowl ecology in south-eastern Australia.
The database generated by this survey contains details of 86 species and subspecies of pelagic and nearshore seabirds recorded in the waters off south-eastern Australia between 1975 and 1993, including data on their distribution and seasonality. Results generated from this database were published as a Birds Australia Monograph.
Databases Generated by Monitoring of Threatened Species
Most bird-monitoring projects generate databases of their target species (usually a threatened species). At least two such databases (Orange-bellied Parrot and Hooded Plover) are housed at Birds Australia National Office. These databases also contain details of other species encountered during surveys, such as Blue-winged and Elegant Parrots, which would be relevant to studies of those extra species. However, due to the sensitive nature of the contents of these databases, not all information is accessible to the public. It is necessary to contact the co-ordinator of each project to discover how much (if any) of the information on their database is available for external use.
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