And in respect to the Yaquina Bay CBC, we lost Whimbrel, Willet, and
Black-bellied Plover to development.
Darrel
From: "larspernorgren" <larspernorgren@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "OBOL Inc." <obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Stephen Quatrano" <stefanoq@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, January 5, 2017 10:54:53 AM
Subject: [obol] CBC methodology
*
This is an important topic. I'm glad folks are engaged. I myself am struggling
to remain lucid and concise about a topic that inspires greater passion as I
age. It's easy to see the species count as a form of competition, but for me
it's an index of effort and performance.
I do the same counts and same areas every year. I know what is possible and
strive to achieve the same the next year. I'm constantly checking the species
total as the day goes along and calculating the remaining minutes of daylight.
Are we spending too much time here? Should we skip some regular spot, or visit
it out of sequence? How about returning to a spot we've already been to?
Counts with a long track record in western Oregon are reporting at least a
thirty percent increase in species totals over their days in the early 70s when
the bulk of us engaged in this thread began our CBC experience. Frequent
explanations at countdowns refer to new species created by taxonomic splitting:
We have gained Thayer's Gull, Cackling Goose, and Clark's Grebe. But we have
also lost Slate-colored Junco, Yellow-shafted Flicker, and Audubon's Warbler.
Then there is the range expansions. Black Phoebe, Red-shouldered Hawk, and
Anna's Hummingbird have become impossible to miss while out on the coast Scrub
Jays and Lesser Goldfinches provide a new focus for the quest. These two
factors combined can account for at best a ten percent improvement.
But what seldom comes up is the cultural sea-change in the whole operation.
Dave Irons tells the story of riding along with Jim Olsen and John Crowell on
the Tillamook Count. They gave short shrift to high value spots such as a sea
watch at Cape Meares, were dismissive of his observations of unusual species,
and devoted excruciatingly huge chunks of time to quixotic pursuit of species
which are always present and essentially never detected (grouse and Gray Jays).
They were part of the "Greatest Generation", a decidedly undeserved moniker at
least as far as CBCs are concerned. Fred Ramsey shared the very same story with
me about the same people.
Fred became compiler for Corvallis in the mid 70s and was a statistics
professor his entire life. He told the Corvallis participants in his inaugural
year,"If you know that going down that road you haven't driven yet you will see
another 20 Juncos, and going down the other road you might, but probably won't,
see a Short-eared Owl, I want you to try for the owl."
The generation doing the counting in the 50s and 60s seemed obsessed with
covering territory more than counting. One time my team leader took me to a
good looking piece of habitat and said,"Every year I come here and every year
there's nothing." I walked north and he walked south. I got one Pacific Wren
for 20 minutes of precious daylight and he got one Song Sparrow. He had been
visiting this beautiful dead zone for four decades. Last year I skipped not
only that spot, but two thirds of the whole sector. The species count for our
team would have been higher, but all of the species missed were ones that every
other team was sure to get. In fact, I devoted the better part of three hours
looking at gulls. The first six species of gull were ticked in twenty minutes.
But I had seen three Western Gulls inside the sector earlier in the month. The
previous day had been the Tangent Count, spitting distance from my current
team. Tangent had recorded Western Gulls in three sectors. I saw Westerns
myself as I drove through the Tangent circle coming home from work. So I looked
at some thousand gulls from the north, south, east and west until I found a
Western. Then we got to start looking for Bewick's Wren. As far as catering to
the desires of other team members, this wasn't nice at all. We did have drop
dead looks at a Burrowing Owl as the gull debacle began. And we finished the
day at the eagle roost, which also happened to be a Short-eared Owl roost. I
summoned the visibly demoralized occupant of the back seat for the spectacle.
Wayne has just posted a very thoughtful post on the way the value of the CBC
data is skewed by the species count focus. I've been aware of this tension
almost from the start. I think the rise of ebird greatly soothes my conscience.
I can collect second rate data on the Count without ruining continent wide
statistics. The previous leader of the sector I'm talking about was a
scientist's dream. He covered the whole thing more or less exactly the same for
45 years. The validity of his Fox Sparrows per party mile was probably way up
there. He also told me that no one ever joined him for a second CBC, which he
attributed to the boring landscape. He had averaged 45 species for the whole
day over those decades. We got 55 the year I joined because I can hear in the
high frequency despite my age: Brown Creeper and Golden-crowned Kinglet were
being missed. Last year we saw or heard 66 species.
When I announced "Tundra Swan" last year based on a noise from the north, our
newbie ex-cargo gave me a look of scornful incredulity. As the son of a nearly
obsessive duck hunter it has never occurred to me that waterfowl make noise,
and that each species has a distinctive set of noises. I have simply accepted
the fact like gravity or breathing. To be openly, albeit silently, regarded by
this churchlady as a liar was a truly novel experience. My feelings weren't
hurt, I was just struck to the bone by that H.D. Thoreau quote:"To see the
world exactly as someone else sees it for a single second strikes me as the
most impossible of miracles." A few minutes later 17 swans came sailing out of
the north, passing close enough to us to make a binocular spurious. Did I feel
smug and vindicated? No, I was delighted the lady got to share this lovely
sight, feel this sterile mile of annual rye-grass where x pounds of sulfate of
ammonia gets applied per acre transformed into an intensely romantic space. A
wholey transient romance. In seconds the swans are gone, perhaps never to
return, and not so much as a Killdeer remains to animate one of the flattest
landscapes on our entire continent. But that memory can linger for the rest of
a lifetime. That was the first time that woman had seen wild swans on the wing,
and maybe the only time.
I hope she remembers it, will maybe bring it to mind many years hence. I know
that for me nothing beats the context of a Christmas Count for remembering
specific birds. I remember every Orange-crowned Warbler I've seen on a CBC with
greater clarity than nearly all of the lifers. And I remember with equal
clarity the O-c Warblers my team mates saw but I didn't. It's running about 3:2
right now. And then there's the CBC lifers. Something of a rara avis at my age,
but there's the opportunity to get other folks lifers. I showed a professional
biologist her first Thayer's Gull in downtown Coquille a few years ago. It was
more satisfying than most of the lifers I've ticked myself. In fact, if given
the choice between augmenting my own life list by one species or showing
someone else a lifer, I'll almost always chose the latter. The lady enjoying
the all-brown, first calendar year Thayer's Gull was a native of said town
Coquille. At some point in the day she said that she was extremely proud to
have never worked at the mill. At present it is owned and operated by
Roseburg Lumber, and dominates the civic viewscape to an extent that the
producers and directors could only dream of.
As any modern Oregon town with a past dominated by one mill, Coquille has an
aggressively threadbare appearance. Tourists are sure to hasten along, while I
find it has the best neighborhoods I've ever birded on a winter's day. I would
guess a job in the mill has been a cherished dream for many a native son or
daughter. Steady mechanization has made it an ever less likely reality. The
brown gull hatched a few months earlier in one of the bleakest landscapes
frequented by vertebrate life, the High Arctic of north central Canada. When
NASA conducted field test with the Mars Rover, they did it there. Now it is
eating earthworms on a lush lawn where frost is a rarity. By amazing
convenience there are five other gulls present, composed of four different
species. It's the perfect opportunity to compare bill size and shape, primary
extension, anything else that causes many experienced birders to quale. The
twenty something Bachelor of Science says,"Isn't this fun?"
It is as profound and sincere as anything I've ever heard, any language,
anywhere. And it reminds me of my four year-old son as we drove away from an
(unsuccessful) day of herring fishing at Newport in the steady rain:"I'm
happy".
Lars
