January reviews

We'd be really interested in a very brief (or as long as you want!) summary of your first month - with the best birds, the most interesting days, the biggest patch surprises etc. As well as being of great interest, and potentially blogposts in themselves, we'll use these to collate a summary of how it's all been going for your patches, and it'll also be really useful when it comes to writing the birdguides review for January. If you have any photos of your goodies (or just any pics at all from your patch) that you wouldn't mind seeing up on the blog or birdguides then please feel free to email them through to us - you will of course be credited. 

Thanks to everyone who has submitted their January reviews so far, its much appreciated and we will have some posts up on the here soon.

the end of January...

....is upon us, and along with it comes the time to sum up how you've all been getting on with the first month of the Patchwork Challenge. Loads of you have submitted scores using the form on the right of the blog - for which we're very grateful, but if you haven't, it'll soon be time to! If you haven't used the form, it's very simple, and if you've done things correctly you should get a message saying that you've submitted your score.

We dont really have a cut off point for receiving scores - but if you want your score to feature in our round ups (here, some hype on twitter and facebook, and a monthly update on Birdguides) then the sooner the better! We'll leave the january scores form on the blog for about a week into February.

Also, to the folk who have joined up more recently, we need you to give us your comparative scores if you have them (the comparative score is, if you have it, the average score - in points, not species of birds - of your last two representative years on patch). You can enter your comparative score in column 'J' of the housekeeping spreadsheet. If you dont submit one to us we will assume that you dont have one....Although we can accept one at any point really...

And after that, it's back to the birding! Get back to your patches and start giving us your February scores as and whenever you want (and the February score form is up on the blog, of course!)

Remember, your February scores are the total number of points you have accrued so far for the year (i.e. Jan and Feb).

So, keep an eye out for the updates and see where your January birding has left you in the ranks!  

New Pages - see your patch up in lights...

Well, perhaps thats dramatising things a little.

But if you look at the green stripe just below Ryans atmospheric Hemsby picture (it looks rare there, doesnt it!) you may notice a couple of new pages. Here you will (hopefully!) find your name among those you will be competing with. If you have a comparative score then that's the page you'll be on....and if you dont, it wont.

There are a few incomplete lines that may well be down to my incompetence, but might also be a result of some little bits of data lacking from our spreadsheets. If you see anything that needs to be changed drop us a line at Patchworkchallenge@gmail.com

Also, if you have told us about your blogs or websites we have linked them to your name, all you have to do is click on it.

Send in your scores!

You'll see over on the right a form for entering your January scores. Exciting!

It should be pretty self explanatory, but anyway, here's a few words....

You can enter a score as many times as you want, but it would be useful if we could get one score a month from folk at least. The score you should enter is the cumulative year list - so each time you enter a score, please enter the 'whole thing' rather than just the new points acquired. We will update you all with the scores at least once a month and will have a league table in the sidebar as of the end of the month.

Cant think of anything else worth saying now, but if you have any questions, drop us a line at

patchworkchallenge@gmail.com

Comparative scores

Look, on the right. Your right....the computers left. There is the form into which you can input your comparative scores. Hi tech or what!

All you need to do is fill out the three simple boxes and the internet will do the rest for us. We know (and we're very grateful for it) that many of you have already inputted your comparative scores onto our housekeeping spreadsheet - apologies for asking you to do it again! The reason for this is that the housekeeping spreadsheet is a little confusing in places, and also, because scores could well have changed since you put them in - it was about three weeks ago for some folks after all...

If we dont hear from you we will either assume the score you've entered on the housekeeping spreadsheet is the one you want to use - and if there is no score entered anywhere we'll assume you dont have a comparative score to imput

So, input your name, your patch, and your comparative points score. If you have scores for the last two years, use them for your average. If you have a single year you can use that as you 'average' instead.

If you're new to all this patching malarky and have no comparative score, please put a nice big N in the comparative score box. You will be entered into a league solely for good folks like yourselves.

So, sorry for asking so many of you to repeat yourselves! If you could have a go it filling it in we'd appreciate it as we hope to use these forms for getting monthly scores from you all. It would be nice to know that it didn't work with plenty of time to sort it out!

What to do if you want to take part...

Here's a quick refresher on the three things you need to do....apologies for the laziness, this is an email I've sent out to a few folk but theres no point in not putting it up here as it's pretty helpful!

First, read this and make sure we've explained the rules properly

http://patchworkchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/what-is-patchwork-challenge.html

Next, read this and fill out the spreadsheet in the link...

http://patchworkchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/housekeeping.html

Once that is done, download your 'scorecard' here

http://patchworkchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/how-to-get-most-out-of-your-scoring.html

If you have a comparative score (i.e. past 2 year lists from the patch) you can stick them into copies of the scorecard and average them to come up with your comparative score. If, like you say, you're averages are unrealistic, then just post what you reckon will be a realistic score.

A word of warning, the scorecard does not like apostrophes - if you have any problems entering particular birds you can select them from the dropdown menu or copy and past them in from the 'list' tab of the spreadsheet.

If you want to make a map to send in, or are concerned that your patch may be too large, there are some great mapping tools here

http://patchworkchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/theres-been-plenty-of-interest-in-this.html

If you have any issues drop us a line....

Good luck with the patches!

How to get the most out of your scoring spreadsheet

Follow this link to get your hands on the Patchwork Challenge official scoring spreadsheet! If that doesn't work there are details at the bottom of this post....

You'll need your own version of this so when it is open, click file and select download...and save it somewhere!

The spreadsheet is dead easy to use. When January 1st comes, all you need to do is enter the birds you see in the 'Spp" column, as and when you see them, along with the date. The spreadsheet will add the values for each species. When you are lucky enough to find a species worth three points or more, put an 'F' in the find column.

The magical spreadsheet will then calculate the number of species you've seen and the number of points you've accumulated. Beware that the spreadsheet gets a little lippy when you enter something incorrectly spelled...there is a 'list' tab where you can look things up if needs be....but dont alter anything on the list page as you will mess up the innards of the spreadsheet and that will make our secret spreadsheet guru very upset ( although if you just downloaded it again he would never know....).

As you enter your list, you'll see your points and total growing in the box to the right of the columns (at the top of the spreadsheet). Once it's downloaded and saved, have a little play around to get the hang of things....anything you put in now can be deleted before January 1st.

For those of you with previous years lists....you'll need a comparative score to 'play against' You can copy the spreadsheet as many times as you like, and put past years lists in it (remembering to fill in the find column, but dont worry about the dates...that wont matter). If you only have a score for this year thats fine, but if you have scores going back even further take an average of the last 2 years for your comparative score.

So there you have it. Once you have downloaded the spreadsheet, and filled out the housekeeping spreadsheet, you are ready to patch! Go for it!

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5XpreEuDAzzdlNsVVpBcGF1RTA

Housekeeping

Things are really picking up pace with the patchwork challenge now. We're applying the last few tweaks to the spreadsheet, so soon it should be available. We were going to email it to everyone, but that seems far too much like hard work, so instead we'll put a link on the blog and keep you all posted as to when it has gone up.

In the meantime can we trouble you for a few minutes of your time? To make things a little easier for us, it would be grand if you could help us with a bit of 'personal patch' info...

In the spreadsheet (URL is at the bottom of the post in case there are issues with the link) would you be able to update any of the first three columns with any details we may have missed?

We could also do with some info in the following columns...

If your patch is inland, stick a Y in the inland column.

If you have a blog/website you'd like us to provide a link for, please paste an address in the appropriate cell.

If you will be able to post a comparative score (i.e. an average score from the 2 previous years please place a Y in the comparative score column - when we have put the  scoring spreadsheet up it can be updated again with the score.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApXpreEuDAzzdHRtQUhyVUwyVmU1NXdYT1FYOFFCMUE

Who are we?

So, who are the crazy people organising this challenge? Well to be honest we were expecting a maximum of 20 patches and thought "ah, it'll be easy to organise". So here we are less than a week after starting up and the number of patches is 55 and growing! We've both been involved in competitive patching for a few years, each with slightly different rules. We decided we wanted to try and make a national competition and combined the rules. So here we are:

Mark Lewis (aka Fat Paul Scholes)

I've been birding for as long as I can remember. I started when I was about 5, because my dad took it up, and when you're 5, whatever your dad does is cool. If only I'd known....

I birded around Durham (with frequent visits to the Tees marshes, Hartlepool, and the Northumberland coast) until the age of 18, at which point I decided to spend a couple of years wasting time and money getting kicked out of Aberdeen university for never turning up. Aberdeen has got a 24 hour pie shop though so I decided to hang around. I've now spent almost as much of my life up here as I did down south, and apart from a few weeks each year birding on Ouessant (Brittany) and Sanday (Orkney), I pretty much do all of my birding at Girdle ness. I also work in an office that is on-patch so can frequently be found looking out of the window. At least I turn up now...

Ryan Irvine (aka ....... Ryan!)

Been birding for 25 years but only got seriously in to birding at Uni where I spent 4 years with the infamous Aberdeen Uni Bird Club, where I met FPS. Since then I have moved around working for the RSPB and such like in Edinburgh, North Wales and Cornwall before settling down in East Anglia for the past 4 years and finding my patch at Hemsby. Hemsby borders the more famous site of Winterton (black lark fame) but is a prime east coast site where very few birders visit.

I'm also the person to blame for the points system we use but in my defence I felt that a self found OBP deserved more than a twitched robin, hence the birdguides and finds system of scoring. My strategy for the competiton is pretty awful to be honest with most of the peak period of autumn normally spent in a wee village in Shetland, so the chances of me winning are pretty slim!

So there we are, two geeky birders becoming slightly more geeky and Mark is probably gone over and beyond geekiness in his last post!

Keep them coming!

There's been plenty of interest in this so far, with well over 20 patches submitted in the first few days and hopefully plenty more to come. Thanks to everyone who's signed up so far, we hope it proves to be a fun experience.

Thanks also to everyone who has sent maps of their patches in. This isn't essential but we may well use them in future and a map of your patch might be a useful thing to have if we ask you to contribute a guest blog when you find that azure tit.....if you want to create a map, the following links have been used by other patchers....

http://www.freemaptools.com/area-calculator.htm

http://www.earthpoint.us/Shapes.aspx

If you look over to the right you will also see that we've added a link to Birdtrack (well, Ryan has added it but I will try to take some of the credit...). It's not essential to the competition but we think it would be brilliant to contribute some data to this fantastic project. Not only will your records have some value, you will also be able to create all sorts of graphs and the like. That sort of thing is very appealing to a patch geek like me...

In the not too distant future there will be a much more informative post about Birdtrack, but in the meantime, follow the link and have a look round, and sign up your patch!

Good birding!

What is the 'patchwork' challenge?

The birding fraternity has seen a shift in attitudes recently, with many birders turning their attention from twitching towards rarity finding.  As a result, there also seems to have been an upturn in the profile watching a local patch.

The advantages of watching a local patch are obvious. Low fuel costs and travel time aside, great pleasure can be derived from getting to learn a place inside out, observing how the seasons change, and getting value from common species that otherwise wouldn’t get a second glance. Throw in the potential for the odd rare bird or scarcity and to me, you have a really exciting, involving way to enjoy your birding.

So what could enhance the patch watchers enjoyment a little? Well, perhaps adding an element of competition would do the trick. We’re a competitive bunch, us birders, both with our peers and ‘internally’ as well. We like a gloat, we like to add things to lists, and we like to know what the numbers are. So why not see if we can add a little friendly competition to our patch birding.

There is one immediate problem with this – how do you compare one patch with another? The birder who ‘patches’ at Minsmere is going to see a lot more species than the birder who patches at some inland woodland. Also, how do you rate the species seen? It’s hardly fair that the hard earned Radde’s warbler earns the same number of points as a meadow pipit. And it’s a bit unfair that a self found Radde’s would score the same as one that you’d twitched.  I think coming up with an absolutely bulletproof way of scoring a competition like this is impossible – there are too many variables, but after some long and hard thought, we’ve come up with a scoring system (actually a combination of two existing scoring systems with a few tweaks) that we believe is suitable.

So bear with me while I go through the rules and the scoring system….it might get a bit dull…

The scores

As I alluded to earlier, the score each bird earns will be related to its rarity. We have used the ‘Birdguides’ rarity categories, which gives every species on the BOU British list a rarity value (common, local, scarce, rare and mega). These categories will be scored 1 – 5 respectively. Those species categorized as scarce or rarer, if self found, will have their points doubled, so, for example, the Radde’s warbler mentioned above will be worth 3 points if you twitch it, but 6 if you find it yourself.

Again though, this definitely seems to favour Minsmere over Manchester, and a patcher working Fair Isle could well score an awful lot of points! But to level the playing field, to even out ‘patch quality’, we propose a scoring system that relates the observers’ score to the tallies run up over previous years. This makes your score representative of how good your year has been on your patch. To do this, all you need to do is present your score as a percentage of your last years score – and as the competition goes on, as a percentage of the average of the previous two years scores.

This may seem complex but there is a reason. We’ve trialed the points scoring system, and for the most part it is fine. However, we noticed that there could be a little contention regarding the value of some birds. A kittiwake, for example, is worth 2 points. A coastal observer will probably see kittiwake every year, a lot, whereas someone based inland would be very pleased when a kitti graced their patch. Using our system, the points gained for the kittiwake by the inland birder (in this instance) will have more impact on their overall score than the kittiwake scored every year by a coastal observer.

For people who are new to patch listing or have had a larger patch in the past we will run a league for point’s only patches for the first year. If there are enough competitors we may even break these down into fairer leagues e.g. inland league, east coast league etc. Thereafter in the second year everyone can be included in the main percentage league using their score from year one.

Simple? Well, no…but it certainly goes a fair way towards leveling the playing field – after all, this is a competition between patchers and not patches. To make things simple, we will send each competitor a spreadsheet that keeps a tally of their score as they add species to it.

The rules

The rules are pretty simple. Your patch must have an area of 3 km² maximum (3 x 1km squares). It doesn’t have to be rectangular, or comply with any OS grid lines; it can be any shape you want it to be. It just has to be 3 km² or smaller.

The birds that contribute to your score must be within the boundaries of the patch (i.e. you don’t need to be), or, seen or heard while you are on your patch. So, heard only birds count, distant passing seabirds count, flyovers count, and birds flushed from the patch while you approach your site count.

Unfortunately, to keep things in the here and now, we won’t be able to wait for rarities committees to verify records of rare birds. I should imagine the majority of rare or mega birds will be of suitable interest to other birders to attract some ‘external verification’, as will many of the scarce birds. However, more than one observer will see not everything so we’ll just have to rely on the honesty of the competitors.

But we’re an honest lot aren’t we, so that wont be a problem!

If you're interested in taking part in the challenge email us on patchworkchallenge@gmail.com if you have any more questions or with your patch boundaries etc.

Patch boundaies example 1

Patch boundaries example 2