WA Northern Wheatbelt Bird Counts from Koobabbie 1987-2018

From the first week in May 1987 until the end of 2018, when they were on their property "Koobabbie" in the Northern Wheatbelt of WA, Alison and John Doley collected data on every species of bird they saw each week. Data were recorded on a booklet prepared by CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Rangelands Research for its 1987-1990 bird atlas (Saunders and Ingram 1995). This booklet provided a list of all species known to have occurred in the central wheatbelt and divided the year into 12 months and each month into four weeks; that is, each year had 48 weeks of potential observations. Any species seen on "Koobabbie" that was not listed on the booklet was added to the list. The Doleys also made extensive notes about their observations at the back of each year’s booklet. These notes, together with the raw presence data, comprise this data set. The data recorded each week consisted of a tick for every species seen that week. For example, one Red-capped Robin seen once during a week was recorded as a tick, as were 100 Galahs seen every day of that week.\nLineage: Initially the data were collected as part of a CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Rangelands Research program conducted from 1987 to 1990. This was conducted by Dr Denis Saunders and Mr John Ingram. The Doleys continued collecting the data after the cessation of the CSIRO project, and supplied the data to Denis Saunders who maintained the data base. They have retained the original data booklets.