[tn-bird] national cbc situation

Harry LeGrand's recent message about the change in the
National Audubon Society publication covering Christmas
Bird Counts brought up some important points about that
publication, but his message contained a few items that
would benefit from clarification.

When I first began to participate in CBCs in 1971, there
was no fee for participation, but a fee was implemented
within a few years, starting with $1 and eventually going
up to the current level of $5.  There has never been a time
during that entire period when payment of the fee resulted
in obtaining a copy of the CBC issue; any CBC participant
who wanted a copy had to pay extra to obtain a copy of that
tome. The charge for a copy of the CBC volume has been
around $10-$15 in recent years, and the only exception to the
requirement to pay extra for the CBC volume has been
extended to CBC compilers, each of whom has received a
complimentary copy of the CBC issue in return for service
as compiler of a count.

With the change to the new, slimmed down CBC volume
there has also been a change in the distribution of the volume.
Now everyone who participates and pays the CBC participants
fee gets a copy of the shorter volume at no extra charge.  So
CBC participants are now actually getting more for their fee
than they were before the change took place.  In fact, CBC
participants should get one copy of the new volume for
each CBC in which they participated.  I participated in three
counts last CBC season, and I received three copies of the
volume.  By the way, I only need two copies, so I have one
extra copy in case anyone wants one; just send me an address,
and I'll mail it to you--as long as the supply lasts.

Cost factors no doubt played a role in the change from a
large CBC volume including all count data for all counts
submitted to one short volume providing mainly a summary.
Apparently, few CBC participants were ordering the hard
copy of the CBC volume; compilers (1500+) received a free
copy, providing no return on cost there.   Eventually, the cost
of publishing the volume simply became prohibitive and a
change in direction had to be made.

I am going to miss the hard copy of the CBC data, and
I wish there were some way to obtain a copy each year.
I would pay up to $100 each year just to get such a
volume, but I doubt that it will ever again be possible to
do so.   However, the up-side of this matter is that the
data are all going to be available, relatively free, via the
internet.  Those CBC participants who are at ease when
using the internet will find the change from hard copy to
electronic copy of the CBC dataset to be no problem.
Others, no doubt, will find this change problematic and
vent their spleens accordingly.

There are differences between the way in which the CBC
is run and the way in which the Breeding Bird Survey is run.
There is no fee to run a BBS; there is a fee to participate in
the CBC.  There is free postage for submitting BBS data to
a branch of the federal government; there is no free postage
for submitting CBC data to a private, non-profit organization.
There is the option of submitting data in hard copy or via
the internet to the BBS office; there is only the option of
submitting data via the internet to the CBC office.

However, despite these differences, there is one important
similarity between the BBS program and the CBC program:
each program generates an enormous dataset that can be used
to track the populations of most birds residing in North America
during summer or early winter, respectively.  For many species
of permanent resident birds and for many species of birds
that breed and winter at different locations in North America,
BBS and CBC data can be used as checks upon each other
to see if the same kind of trend is being generated by each of
these survey methods for a given species.  The scientific value
of two independently acquired and very large datasets for so
many species of birds is hard to estimate, but it almost certainly
exceeds the sum total of CBC fees collected each year by
many times.  So, by making a relatively small $5 investment
for each CBC participated in, CBC participants ensure the
continued viability of a program that has huge value in the
ongoing human effort to inventory the bird resources of our
continent (and eventurally our planet?).  If you keep track
of all the CBC fees you pay during your lifetime, they will
almost certainly not exceed the cost of one reasonably good
pair of binoculars, and how many pairs of bins will you go
through in that lifetime?

I hope Tennessee birders will continue to support the national
CBC effort.  Since you now receive the short CBC summary
issue, you'll actually be getting more for your fees in the
future than you received in the past at the personal level; and
on a larger level, you will continue to ensure that the oldest
and largest bird-monitoring project ever undertaken by humans
remains intact, offering information that no effort in a single state
or smaller political entity can possibly match.

Steve Stedman
Cookeville, TN


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