No, I am not advocating for 5 min counts during winter. That does not work. I
am advocating for keeping track of the numbers at each place you visit, whether
you stay there for a few minutes or a few hours. This is absolutely not about
point counts. It’s about filling in gaps in knowledge of winter birds outside
the boundaries of establishing new CBC circles. That’s all it is.
On Dec 6, 2018, at 1:49 PM, <adamus7@xxxxxxxxxxx> <adamus7@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I find it infinitely more satisfying, personally, to challenge myself to find
as many species as I can within a large area (e.g., Big Day, Big Sit, CBC,
Oregon 2020 block, etc.) during a specified period of time (day, month, year,
etc.), than to go to a dozen point locations and do a 5-minute point count at
each. In 5 minutes I can usually find many more species by jumping from
habitat to habitat and stopping only briefly at each. Doing so tests the
predictive habitat models rolling around in my head. I don't discount the
fact that point counts as Doug describes give data much more useful to
science. I voluntarily do hundreds of those counts each year, as well as BBS
routes (which are a series of timed point counts), and I urge others to do
them. But whatever the limitations of data collected from CBCs and other
large areas, I enjoy the "sporting" flavor of those to a greater degree. I'm
a wildlife biologist, and I hope loosely-or unstructured area searches will
always be a part of birding, whether or not they get sucked into the
eBorg-o-sphere.
Paul Adamus
Corvallis
-----Original Message-----
From: obol-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <obol-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of W.
Douglas Robinson
Sent: Thursday, December 6, 2018 1:24 PM
To: OBOL <obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [obol] Re: new CBCs and gaps
Here he goes again…eBird this, eBird that. But, why do we need new CBCs to
fill gaps in winter bird information?
We could have fun visiting a poorly-counted place, coordinate the counting so
multiple teams are out on the same day in nearby areas, and share results at
the end of the day over hot food and drinks, all without the paperwork and
bu-ro-crazy of a CBC.
In fact, simply eBirding the effort could be argued to be more scientifically
useful. If each party created new checklists for each place they counted
birds, instead of summing up (guessing) how many birds of each species they
had all day long in their CBC section, then the counts are actually much more
useful for repeat efforts in the future.
Let’s face it, CBC protocol has barely changed in 100 years. But we have
learned a whole lot about the problems of using such bird count data to learn
much that is scientifically defensible about population changes over time.
One of the biggest challenges is not knowing exactly where the data were
gathered (variation from year to year in routes, time at stops in sector,
different observers who count numbers in different ways, etc, ad nauseam).
With eBird it is very easy to create new personal locations at each stop you
make all day long and keep more accurate count data that someone then has a
chance to repeat with some level of confidence they are doing it the same way
you did.
No constraints of staying inside the circle of a diameter that has no clear
biological justification. No commitment to try and count it every year. No
worries about minimum number of people participating. Also no worries about
site overlap or avoiding double counting. All the modern bird counting
literature says that we can soooo much more about bird numbers when we DO
count the same sites more than once.
Identify some of the under-birded places, gather up interested friends to go
count birds, archive the data in eBird (call it a CeBC, if you will),
socialize, and then go find another under-explored place next time.
At some future time, eBorg will eat the CBC database anyway. It makes logical
sense and National Audubon is an eBird partner. Maybe this dire prediction of
assimilation gives us a little extra willingness to feel like we can make
meaningful contributions without being inside an official circle.
But continue supporting your favorite CBCs. I look forward to a couple myself
this winter.
Doug
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