I like David's idea re: OBA. The other thing is staggering the count weekends
for nearby circles. I know that was tough this year with Christmas falling on
one of the weekends. But I know Tim, Jim Rogers and I have tried to stagger
Coos Bay, Bandon and Port Orford on different weekends down here often
employing the same core of birders. I understand there are far more circles
closely situated up there. Still there are six weekend days in the count and
honestly between Christmas and New Year's weekdays will find plenty of birders
available as well.
I do get the beginning birder issue. In my count, I assign them to my team as I
know many of my experienced team leaders absolutely hate it when I assign
someone new to their team for all the reasons that have been stated. I know
Tim's approach is to encourage newbies to participate in the monthly chapter
Audubon field trips before they jump into a CBC. Still you have to start
somewhere even if the penalty is having one scope to share with my four
companians like I endured Sunday. Who knows, maybe one of them will be ready to
lead the area when I step away.
Harv Schubothe
Sent from my BlackBerry - the most secure mobile device
From: LLSDIRONS@xxxxxxx
Sent: January 3, 2017 5:37 PM
To: obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; rkorpi@xxxxxxxxxxx
Reply-to: LLSDIRONS@xxxxxxx
Subject: [obol] Re: Portland Area CBCs
Greetings All,
I agree with Ray Korpi and Bob Archer, both the Forest Grove and Sauvie Island
CBC's merit stronger participation for reasons that they pointed out. The
densities of wintering waterfowl and seed-eating birds (sparrows, juncos etc.)
in the Tualatin Valley and on Sauvie Island make for spectacular winter
birding. Bob made the statement that the Oregon side of the Sauvie Island
circle has always been challenged to field enough observers. In actuality, this
has not always been the case.
Back in my birding youth, shortly after Jeff Gilligan started the Sauvie Island
CBC, this count typically generated a species tally that was among the top four
or five counts in Oregon. I can't remember the year, but in the early 1970's
the Sauvie Island count got 130 species, which tied with Medford for the
highest species count statewide. In those years I think Tillamook Bay was still
Oregon's only coastal CBC, with Coos Bay getting started sometime in the
mid-70's (as I recall). The Tillamook Bay CBC rarely generated a species total
above the 120s in those days.
Sauvie Island hasn't sniffed 130 species in many a moon, in part because much
of the open grassland areas on the island have been replaced by nursery stands
of ornamental trees that attract zero birds and there are a lot more houses and
people living on the island than there used to be. Not having the "pellet
plant" for gulls hasn't helped either. Above all else–and this is no knock on
more recent compilers–the count no longer has a young energetic compiler (Jeff)
who not only recruited most of the good birders of his generation to
participate, but also spent many hours in the days leading up to the count
scouting the island and staking out good birds for count day. Jeff started the
count and it was his baby. It's hard to replace the sort of passion and
enthusiasm that he brought. Think about how having Tim Rodenkirk compile the
Coos Bay CBC has changed its trajectory from a fairly relaxed casual affair
done mostly by locals to a count that now attracts birding talent from all over
the state. Tim's leadership increased the average species tally for that count
by about 15-20 birds. The Coos Bay CBC has now hit or topped 160 in multiple
years, something that no Oregon CBC had done before he was the compiler. In
fact, hitting 150 was rarified air before Tim took over in Coos Bay. The
numbers of species that Sauvie Island hit under Jeff's leadership (particularly
130) back in the 70's and early 80's was on par with Coos Bay hitting the 160
mark. Even today, with many many more talented birders out on counts like
Eugene, Corvallis and Portland, hitting 130 species on a Willamette Valley CBC
continues to be a banner event.
Ray suggested that getting some of the Portland participant base to switch over
to Forest Grove and/or Sauvie Island would benefit those counts. I'm not sure
that this is the answer. While Portland has an incredibly high participation
rate, many of the participants are rank beginners who arguably impede the
process more than they enhance it. Shawneen and I were sub-sector leaders in N.
Portland for a couple years and the number of participants that we had to
manage was to say the least unwieldy. Many of the folks who were with us could
identify only a handful of the birds that they spotted. Further, they had to be
taught on the fly to estimate larger groups of birds instead of counting by
ones. We would have to explain that counting birds is often not an exact
science, especially when you are looking at a field full of 3000 Cackling
Geese, or a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds flying over. Of course only the
birds that they saw registered in their consciousness, so when we would pish a
blackberry mound and see/hear eight Fox Sparrows when they only saw two, there
would be some bewilderment over the numbers that we were calling out as we
added to the tally sheet. Some participants did not know the birds or the
taxonomic order well enough to offer much help with keeping the tally sheets,
so we would have to stop to tally up numbers rather than having them scribe as
we drove on to the next stop. Simply stated, it was like leading a beginner
level field trip (which I enjoy) and doing a CBC (which I also enjoy) at the
same time. I have no interest in trying to do both as the same time and I know
some other long-time birders who have backed away from doing CBCs for similar
reasons. We did N. Portland for two years, then covered out local Beaverton
neighborhood (all on foot) the next year and then two years ago I did a small
section in the Milwaukie area with my mom and some of casual birder friends at
Rose Villa. Otherwise, we've decided to instead devote our CBC efforts to
counts where observer turnout is more problematic. In recent years we've done
the Cowlitz-Columbia, Lyle, Washington, Lincoln City, and Forest Grove counts.
Before moving back to Portland I did the Brownsville CBC for about ten years
running. I haven't done Sauvie Island in decades. Shawneen and I may have to
add it into our rotation. This year we closed on a new house Dec 1st and have
subsequently spent all of our weekends over there doing some pre-move in
projects, so we limited ourselves to a single count (Lincoln City, which we'd
never done before). We felt bad not helping with Forest Grove, as that is one
of our favorite local birding haunts.
The paragraph above may read like "elite birder snobbery" to some, but that is
not my point. Actually, I have on several occasions suggested a solution that I
think would be quite workable. The Audubon Society of Portland views the
Portland CBC as an opportunity to introduce birding to people who've never done
it before and an opportunity to get folks engaged in the citizen science that
ultimately informs us about how the distribution of birds is changing across
the landscape, Indeed doing a CBC is like a gateway drug when it comes to
birding. It certainly was for me as a young kid. Cleary, getting folks more
interested in birds/birding and censusing them are worthwhile aims. That said,
doing an all-day Christmas Count with someone like me who is bent on getting to
all the best spots in my assigned area and seeing the most species possible may
not be the ideal introductory experience. Here's my idea. Why not create an
introductory CBC experience for the beginner types that not only teaches them
the basic mechanics of a CBC, but is also run more like a field trip and have
it go about half day (3-4 hours) instead of a Screech-Owl to Short-eared Owl
affair that runs from pre-dawn to post-dusk (my normal routine). Portland has
some really great spots that would be perfect for this sort of entry-level
experience. Crystal Springs and Vanport Wetlands/Force Lake area come to mind.
These areas offer easy access, no death march hikes, plus plenty of water and
woodland so you will never struggle to show folks a nice variety of
easily-viewed species. You could incorporate the teaching of basic
counting/estimating skills and then talk about the statistical irrelevance of
getting perfectly exact counts of the more abundant species.
The Audubon Society of Portland (ASP), which sponsors/coordinates the Porland
CBC, could easily offer this sort of introductory experience, sort of like the
introduction to hawk-counting trips that Shawneen and I lead to the Bonney
Butte Hawkwatch station each Fall. Then, ASP could promote the idea of also
doing some of the many other counts in NW Oregon in addition to doing the
Portland count. This would help fill up the pipeline with the participants
needed to sustain outlying counts like Sauvie Island, Forest Grove,
Cowlitz-Columbia and others that offer great winter birding.
Another option would be to have the Oregon Birding Association (OBA) take this
on as a project. Over the years OFO/OBA has been far and away the leader in
compiling and disseminating information about all of the Oregon counts. Perhaps
it might even make sense to offer some pre-CBC training field trips a month or
so in advance of the CBC season. There isn't a shortage of birders, but there
are many birders who never do CBCs and surely many others who aren't tuned in
to the number of local counts they might do, or that those counts could really
use their help. I am part of the content committee for the Pacific Northwest
eBird Portal. Given the number of active eBird users in Oregon and Washington,
it probably makes sense to offer a CBC information page like the OBA has done
for years on the PNW eBird Portal as well.
Finally, if you are a regular participant/sector leader on one of these counts
that struggles to attract enough participants, help the compiler out by
recruiting your own team and perhaps even other similarly experienced birders
who might make a good section leader. Under no circumstance should count's like
Sauvie Island or Forest Grove be left to fade away.
Dave Irons
Portland, OR
________________________________
From: obol-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <obol-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Ray
<rkorpi@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2017 8:54 PM
To: obol
Subject: [obol] Portland Area CBCs
Hi all,
I'm mainly responding to Stefan Schlick's comments on the Forest Grove CBC,
which Mary Anne Sohlstrom had also made a year or two (or maybe more) ago.
Portland's CBC has always been a big dog--in some ways, the number of bodies is
needed given the amount of roads and small parks to cover. But 200! I thought
we had an embarrassment of riches 15+ years ago when i was compiler and we had
near or at 100, with most of those in the southern part of the circle.
This year, the weather moving the Sauvie count made the three Portland area
counts on three consecutive days, which makes it difficult. The Sauvie count
is half in Vancouver, and I know that the Sauvie side, like the Forest Grove
count, has always had some difficulty getting folks there. ]
The weekend Christmas always screws things up as well--it's best to have one of
each of these counts on each weekend, but Portland's numbers still dominate.
What would be good is if some of the Portland CBC folks might consider going to
one of the other local counts--once they have done one in Portland, they have
good experience and know what to do. Frankly, the changes in habitat in the
Forest Grove CBC circle make it one that we ought to be spending more time and
resources on as that habitat changes and growth occurs. It really is one that
merits continuation.
A weekday count in the Portland area would also be attractive as well. I know
that I only could look at weekday counts this year, and the ones close were not
ones I could do (the complications of a blended family have made it exceedingly
difficult for me to get out to even one count the last five years after
counting for 30 in a row)
Ray Korpi
Vancouver WA
