Hi Linda (and all),
Thanks and three cheers to you & Johnny for your many years of
dedication to this challenging route!
Your blog posting was fun to read and gave another example of how
there's always *something* that happens on these remote mountain routes.
I'm very glad that Sean is able to keep the VOG route going.
Let me echo your call for more birders to step up and fill in some of
Oregon's vacant BBS routes:
https://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/RouteMap/Map.cfm
Not sexy? What could be more sexy than contributing to the main method
for monitoring land bird populations, continent-wide, going on half a
century?
BBS routes can also be very rewarding from a personal perspective. When
you visit the same stops every year for 3 years straight, you begin to
gain an appreciation for how the landscape changes from year to year,
and how the birds respond. The longer you keep doing a route, the more
it grows on you.
I guess it's kind of like being in a committed relationship -- you
develop more appreciation for your route over time. But there's no rule
that says you can only commit to one route -- many birders have 2 or 3
routes!
Happy birding,
Joel
On Sun, 2016-07-03 at 10:57 -0700, Linda Fink wrote:
Many thanks to Sean Burgett for agreeing to take over our Riley Peak
BBS, starting in Valley of the Giants. He accompanied us on our scouting
trip and will be doing it from next year onwards. We could not have
found a better replacement. He knows the area, knows the birds, and
hears them better than I do.
I hope other birders, still young enough to hear the birds and endure
the trips, will begin replacing those of us who have served our time and
need to give up our routes. The Breeding Bird Survey may not be as
"sexy" as the newer surveys, but it is rigorously checked and rechecked,
has identical protocols for all, and is what biologists have used to
monitor populations... for 50 years... and are still using.
Here is the blog post I wrote about our final survey.
http://lindafink.blogspot.com/2016/07/our-final-breeding-bird-survey.html
Linda Fink
