Search Hints

We hope that this search page is self-explanatory, but there are several facilities and details that may not be obvious:

• Only reports that match ALL of your search criteria will be returned.
• If you search only by species, or only by species and county, without any additional criteria, you will be transferred to the relevant page for that species, or species and county; just click Search again to refine your search.
• For all other searches (i.e. those involving regions, dates or notes), you will be shown a list of the "accepted" reports that match your search criteria, sorted by year, then area, then first date seen.
• If your search matches more than 200 reports, only the first 200 results will be shown.
• You can search within a particular area - usually corresponding to a county - or a whole region, but not both.
• Date searching is highly flexible, as follows:
  • search for birds between two particular dates (e.g. between 1 September 1960 and 15 May 1968)
  • search for birds between particular dates in ANY year, by omitting the year (e.g. between 1 October and 3 November)
  • search for birds between particular months in ANY year, by omitting the day and year (e.g. between September and November)
  • search for records between two specific months by omitting the day (e.g. between November 1960 and March 1961)
  • search for records between two specific years by omitting the day and month (e.g. between 1977 and 1982)
• If you leave the second set of date fields empty, the search will assume the same selections as the first; for example:
  • to search for records in May of any year, set the first month to May and leave the remaining date fields empty
  • to search for records in 1960 only, set the first year to 1960 and leave the remaining date fields empty
  • to search for records in May 1960 only, set the first month to May, the first year to 1960 and leave the remaining date fields empty
  • to search for records on 15 May 1960 only, set the first three fields to 15, May and 1960 respectively and leave the second set of date fields empty
• All date searches are inclusive (e.g. searching for records between May and July will return all relevant records from May, June and July) and refer to the first date on which the bird was definitely recorded.
• Records with only vague indications of the date are included where appropriate (e.g. a search for records between 1st and 5th May would not return a record dated only as "May" as it may not have occurred within the specified period, but a search for records in the whole of May would include such a record).
• If you omit the year and the first date or month is later than the second, the search will "wrap round" the year-end (e.g searching between November and January will show all reports from November, December and January).
• Searches on Notes will only match reports where the search string appears exactly as typed within the notes of the matching record (although the search is not case-sensitive).
• Bear in mind that the database includes only those records accepted by the British Birds Rarities Committee to the end of 2005, and Irish birds to the end of 2004 only. The database will be updated with recent reports as soon as possible following publication of subsequent rarity reports.