Tim,
I didn't really understand the value of Phil's approach either until I spent
several hours sea watching Boiler Bay one busy day. The volume is too much to
handle. If one spends several hours watching, you really do end up needing a
way to estimate based on rates of birds moving. It's inexact, for sure. One
hopes to be in the ballpark of at least rank ordering species numbers correctly
and giving some idea of volume.
Other solutions are: have a team of counters with mechanical clickers so that
each observer can focus on particular species groups; count in shorter time
intervals and scatter counts thru the morning. I do 15 min counts. It's about
as long as I can focus and keep 25 species worth of numbers in my head, while
also looking for the rare stuff. I do use a fair number of spuhs.
Probably some other fine solutions out there, too.
Doug
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