[missbird] Re: "New" abbreviations

  • From: Wayne Patterson <wrp6@xxxxxxx>
  • To: "jlyancy@xxxxxxxxxxx" <jlyancy@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2015 12:47:05 -0800

Crossley's Field Guide has an index of them, if you'd rather have it in book 
form.  The guide is pretty useful as well.

Wayne Patterson
Shannon, MS  Lee Co. 


On Monday, January 5, 2015 2:40 PM, JR Rigby <jr.rigby@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
  


Hi Jesse,

These four letter codes are used by bird banders and often as shorthand among 
birders. They suffer from being easier to use than to decipher because most of 
them are constructed in a very regular and easy to remember way (but this often 
leads to use of incorrect codes where they deviate from the pattern... adding 
to confusion). 

The codes and their decoding are available here: 
http://www.birdpop.org/DownloadDocuments/Alpha_codes_tax.pdf
Just use a simple ctrl-f search to find the common name or code of interest.

There is also a recent and exhaustive set of commentary about usage of these 
codes by birders available on the ABA Blog:
Rich Wright: http://blog.aba.org/2014/12/the-code.html

Derek Lovitch: 
http://blog.aba.org/2014/12/open-mic-the-deal-with-alpha-codes-part-1.html
Derek Lovitch Part II: 
http://blog.aba.org/2014/12/open-mic-the-deal-with-alpha-codes-part-2.html

Hope that helps,

JR
Oxford


On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 2:29 PM, Jesse Yancy <jlyancy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This might sound simplistic, but I’m often confused by the new abbreviations 
that are often used in this forum (TRKI for tropical kingbird, for instance) 
and I was wondering if there is some sort of guide to these or are they just 
ones birders use as shorthand. 
>Jesse Yancy 
> 

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