Work in progress

Updated: March 2024

Notes

  1. This file lists ‘active’ records, plus some of those within on-going reviews
  2. Only the published report in British Birds is the official record. This WIP file is for guidance as to the ‘state of play’ of submissions received up to the date on the file. Once a record is published in British Birds Annual Report, which comes out in the October edition, it is no longer held on the WIP file. The WIP ‘cycle’ should be thought as starting in late September/October when the ‘in circ’ file starts with all the records submitted for the new ‘current’ year and any earlier ones that have not been completed.

We know that often some records are missing, including high profile ones, but with no written submission then they cannot be in the database. If you are involved in the finding of such records, then send in a submission!

Using the file

The spreadsheet contains the following main worksheets:

Decisions & InCirc (Sheet 1)

OK, OK-at BOURC, OK-Cat D, OK-ex BBRC show accepted records.

IC means In Circulation

NP means Not Proven

HELD means the record has been assessed but no definitive outcome resulted. This will be because either taxonomy or identification criteria for the taxa are not resolved.

OK-at BOURC: will be for a record which is not yet on the British List, and which has to then be sent to BOURC. See our FAQ page www.bbrc.org.uk/faqs-frequently-asked-questions and scroll down to “Is there something special if the record is a ‘First for Britain’ ?”

The suffix ‘same’ means that this is not the first sighting of the bird(s) concerned. It could be a returnee from previous years, or a bird that moved location during its stay.

Waiting (Sheet 2)

There are two groups of records that could be shown here. These are:

Waiting for BOURC: Records where we are waiting for BOURC to decide if the taxa/species has had an acceptable first for Britain. Once that happens, we can assess these other later records. If BOURC turn down the first record we have sent, then we will look for other suitable candidates from within these later records.

Currently there are no taxa with this category.

Waiting for Info: Used for taxa where research is in progress – quite often this revolves around taxonomy and which races are valid. Obviously until that is resolved there is no sense in assessing.

Currently Lesser Whitethroats, some Gull races and Grey-bellied Brant are in this category.

Filtering and searching

You can easily filter the records to see just a sub-set. For example, to look for a particular species go to the top row, column F ‘Name’ and click on the down arrow. Select the species you require and only those will be shown. Further filtering can then take place. For example, to now look for a particular county where that species occurred go to column G ‘County’ and click on the down arrow again.

To remove the filter(s) click on the down arrows of the same column(s) and select ‘(All)’.