Data collecting

The objective was to incorporate all available faunistic data on birds of the Sečovlje salt-pans

All known literature sources were used, as well as data supported by irrefutable specimens found in public collections, and observations by professionally qualified personnel in the field. The data collection includes all records made during the ornithofaunistic research, with numerous new data. We are aware, however, that some still remain in ornithological notebooks of a number of bird lovers and watchers.

The data gathered in this part have been collected at various levels. Many records from the 1973-1983 period are chance observations, while some of them were made randomly. Occasionally, bird netting and ringing was carried out unsystematically in the area concerned. In spite of several attempts, we have not succeeded in obtaining the Sečovlje salt-pans bird netting results kept by the Slovenian Museum of Natural History.

Since 1983, the birds' breeding, migration and overwintering in the area concerned have been systematically surveyed with various mapping methods.

In the 2004-2009 period, regular weekly bird monitoring in the survey area was carried out with the aid of the territory mapping method (Bibby et al., 1992). The survey area covers the area of Sečovlje Salina Nature Park with toponyms. The latter are suitably named parts of the Sečovlje salt-pans and marked with a code, which is adjusted with the code of the quality technologist in the firm SOLINE Pridelava soli d.o.o., which means that production work can be compared with nature-conservation work, and vice versa. Monitoring is implemented in accordance with the Park's annual programme, with the monitoring results presented in annual reports, which are prepared by the professional nature-conservancy monitoring associate for each separate year or period.

 When entering data in the field itself, PDAs (HP iPAQ 6915, HTC HD in SCC SC 800) with GPS receiver and  Pocket Bird Recorder program were used. For data entering, saving and processing, the Wildlife Recorder equipment was applied.

Into the data base, all available records and quotations from literature from 1870 onwards were included. In total, 17,157 entries were made in the Park's base till the end of 2009.

In the 1983-2009 period, a little more than 1,500 field days were conducted in the area of Sečovlje salt-pans. Three periods of fairly intensive research and visiting of the area under consideration are evident from this period. The fairly great number of observations made in the early 1980s is correlated with enlivened youth research camps and the work carried out by Ixobrychus Ornithological Society, the observations made in the 1990s with individual research by separate ornithologists, while in 2004 regular weekly monitoring began to be implemented on the grounds of the adopted management obligation. In the preparation of distribution and other maps, the DMAP and DMAP Digitizer programmes were used.

Our data statistical processing was aided by the Biodiversity Pro, TRIM and BioToolKit programmes, while in the interpretation of these data the basic work from this sphere, i.e. »Measuring Biological Diversity« by A. E. Magurran (2004) was taken into consideration.