The abalist program: computing American Birding Association list totals |  |
The abalist program: computing American Birding Association list totals | |
Abstract
Describes a system for counting birds according to the rules of the American Birding Association.
This publication is available in Web form and also as a PDF document.
Please forward any comments to john@nmt.edu.
Table of Contents
class Args: Command line
argumentsclass FirstRecordSetFirstRecordSet.addSight()FirstRecordSet.purgeUncountables()FirstRecordSet.__purgeCheck()FirstRecordSet.__purgeAncestors()FirstRecordSet.__removeSight()FirstRecordSet.__promoteForm()FirstRecordSet.genPhylo()FirstRecordSet.genByDate()FirstRecordSet.__init__()class FirstSight:
First-sighting objectaddAllSightings(): Read the
input filesaddFile: Read one sightings fileaddSighting(): Filter and add
one sightingfilterOut(): Reject records by
date and locationwriteReports(): Generate final
reportsThe American Birding Association (ABA) sanctions competitive bird listing: who has seen the most bird species? There are numerous lists.
The most inclusive is the world life list: who has seen the most bird species anyplace, ever?
Some lists are constrained by location: who has seen the most species in North America, or one state?
Some lists are constrained by time: who has seen the most birds in a calendar year?
There are combinations of time and space constraints as well: state year lists, day lists seen from a point location, and so on.
The purpose of the abalist program is to compute a fairly standard set of list totals: life lists, year lists, state lists, and state year lists.
This program depends on the author's sizeable infrastructure for managing bird records. Relevant links:
A system for representing bird taxonomy: Files describing bird classification and a system of short bird codes. We will refer to this as the xnomo system.
A system for encoding bird field notes: Covers the encoding of bird field observations for scientific purposes and a system for putting them up on the Web. In later sections we'll refer to this as the birdnotes system.
The abalist program reads the encoded field notes encoded for scientific use and interprets them according to the ABA's guidelines for countability.
This publication is available in Web
form and also as a PDF document. Please forward any comments to
tcc-doc@nmt.edu.
Files mentioned herein are available online:
abalist.py: The
principle script.
sysargs.py: Author's
command line argument digester module.
For the txny.py module, see
A system for representing bird
taxonomy.
For the birdnotes.py module,
see A system for encoding bird field
notes.