How FlagWatch works

FlagWatch is a Steward-facing capture tool. It does not replace BirdMark, the Australasian Wader Studies Group, the Victorian Wader Study Group, the Queensland Wader Study Group, the Global Flyway Network, or any of the researchers who actually band birds. Those organisations do the science. FlagWatch is the layer that helps trained Stewards turn what they see in the field into clean records that flow back into BirdMark — with surrounding context that a research record alone doesn't capture.

The simplicity belies the power. The decode panel that tells you "this bird was banded in Yalujiang Estuary" runs protocol-lookup, FSB-cache search, and BirdMark code construction at once. Every record carries an audit trail — when you logged it, when it was reviewed, when it went to BirdMark, when the life history came back. Nothing sits in someone's spreadsheet for months waiting to be entered.

Circuit-and-stops

A typical Steward outing visits more than one site. FlagWatch follows that pattern. You start a circuit at your first site — set up the stop, log the conditions, read flags. Then add another stop when you move on. Your identity and date persist; site, conditions, and flag reads start fresh. Each stop inherits its own context. End the circuit when you're done.

A single-stop session works the same way — just one stop, one End Circuit. No extra steps for the simple case.

Reading a colour combination

The EAAF Shorebird Colour Marking Protocol (MOP12 DD.10, 2025) assigns unique combinations to over 70 banding sites. A handful you're likely to see in Moreton Bay:

Full reference: EAAFP Colour Marking Protocol (PDF)

Where your data goes

Each bird writes to two destinations.

To BirdMark (research): observer, date, location, species, flag code, optional photo. Used for survival modelling, migration mapping, population trend analysis.

To FSB (steward context): tide, weather, flock numbers, disturbance, your confidence rating, FSB record ID linking back. Used to train new stewards and ground roost management decisions in real conditions.

Every sighting passes through the Senior Reviewer queue first — a one-pass plausibility check before forwarding to BirdMark. That keeps the data flowing in clean.

What comes back

Two feedback moments.

Immediately at submission, the decode panel surfaces the banding country and site, plus any prior FSB sightings of the same engraved code by other stewards.

Within five days of the reviewer forwarding to BirdMark, BirdMark replies by email with the bird's full life history — every prior resighting across the flyway. Paste the email into your sighting in My Sightings, and the history attaches.

The Steward Course

FlagWatch is for trained Stewards. The Shorebird Steward Course is the path: a single course covering the science, the protocol, the field practice, and the QWSG field component. Without that grounding, the colour codes and engravings can be misread, and bad data makes its way into BirdMark.

The public-facing tool is ShorelineWatch — that's where curious visitors get their taste of shorebird observation without the pressure of generating research-grade records. FlagWatch is the trained-Steward path.

Children aged 7–14 (and their parents and teachers) may also enjoy the QWSG-developed My Shorebird Watcher app, free on Google Play and the App Store — a structured introduction to shorebirds along the Queensland coast.