Thanks everyone for the useful info on the 4-letter codes. I agree with
Van Harris that good manners calls for typing out the full name of a
species at least upon the first usage in an e-mail.
I also prefer species names in ALL CAPS when they are in a body of other
text, so that they are easy to pick out. This practice is a rule on some
other listservs, and I think it works well, but that is just my personal
preference.
Jason Hoeksema
Oxford, MS
On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 2:47 PM, Wayne Patterson <wrp6@xxxxxxx> wrote:
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
