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I have recently discovered that at least some past splits in Birder's Diary become Purple Gallinules. I have uncovered two specific examples of this happening. First is the the split of Magnificent Hummingbird to become Rivoli's and Admirable Hummingbird. When I list sightings using the Clements 2019 list, all my Arizona sightings of Magnificent/Rivoli's Hummingbirds and Costa Rica sightings of Magnificent/Admirable Hummingbirds are now missing, but bogus 'sightings' of Purple Gallinule have appeared at the same dates and places. Apparently the information on the correct taxon is somewhere in the program. If I list sightings using the Clements 2015 list, I have the correct Magnificent Hummingbird sightings. However, there are still bogus Purple Gallinules at the same dates and places.
Similarly, the split of Common Moorhen sometime back has turned all my Moorhens into Purple Gallinules.
Given the large number of Purple Gallinules that have appeared in World wide lists this is just the tip of the iceberg.
This is really bad - please help.
Hi David,
This was reported back in 2017-2018 time frame.
With the BD Reconcile Wizard, prior to NOV-2018, v5.0, there was an issue wherein if you hit the wrong key and did not realize it, you assigned some sightings to Purple Gallinule. This issue has since been corrected. In looking at my notes, this is all the info I have been able to find on this. A couple emails and some comments in code. Very sorry for this.
The solution is pretty easy depending on how many real/fake PUGA sightings you have: Review all of your Purple Gallinule sightings and make appropriate corrections.
So sorry for this. My best memory is that if the user hit Enter without selecting a species to assign, it got auto-assigned to PUGA. But this has been fixed since Nov-2018, so not an issue anymore.
Let me know if I can assist further.
Jeff
From @jdhoule01
That is useful information, and explains the spottiness of this phenomenon.
However, I now have more than a hundred questionable sightings of Purple Gallinule relating to lists back to 1978. Tracking all those lists down is a very time consuming task, if I can even find them.
Do you know which updates this was a problem for? There are clearly a number of other splits that fell afoul of this, and figuring out what all of them are is half the battle.
Hi David,
First, sorry for the confusion of this Question/Comments/Answer format. It is a popular format among many support sites, but it seems to be causing some confusion probably because we came from the Post/Replies format of the old site. Let's give it a bit more time before we abandon it and go back to the previous format. You Answered my Answer, instead of Commenting on it, by clicking the Add a comment button. Not obvious the first time. So, I removed your Answer and added the text as a comment above. FYI
As for this issue. It took me some time, but I have finally figured out (e.g. re-remembered) what that problem was and how it happened. And, it is still a problem! You can see in the attached screenshot, when for example reconciling a sighting from Clements 2016 Magnificent Hummingbird. The problem happens, when you press the Space Bar on this window, it activates the Any Name section and when you press Enter, it chooses the current row - guess what row that is? (American) Purple Gallinule!!! And bingo, you just assigned all (selected) sightings to Purple Gallinule. I have fixed this in the next release. I thought I had fixed that, but now see that there are multiple ways of accidentally triggering that selection.
Now, for how to deal with your incorrect Purple Gallinule sightings. I just did a couple things.
- Open up Reconcile Sightings window and choose the Clements 2016 and Clements 2017 respectively and click the Report button. This will display the Reconcile report in your browser window. You can search this report/window using Ctrl+F for 'purple gallinule'. It will show you which things you incorrectly reassigned to Purple Gallinule. You may want to do the same from each year up to the current; e.g. 2017 vs 2018 and 2018 vs 2019 as this mistake could have occurred at any juncture.
- Now, you need to use the View Sightings Setup (F3) window to bring up all your Purple Gallinule sightings to view. You can sort the list by clicking on a column header to sort by location, date/time, etc. Now you are going to have to go through your PUGA sightings that seem out of place and cross-reference them against sightings (a 2nd View Sightings window) for the same location/date using Clements 2016 for the species shown in the Reconcile report from #1.
I just went through this process with a couple of intentional PUGA reconcile errors and it seems straightforward.
I can't tell you how sorry I am about this. I work very hard to make sure that a user cannot, even accidentally, make these kinds of mistakes. But this one got through the cracks.
Would you please try this method and post back (Add a comment) and let us know how it goes and if you have any issues or further questions.
Thanks,
Jeff
