I am with Lars 100 percent. When I walk back I am birding. I don't get to the
bottom of the trail and say good I am done, I am going to stop counting and go
back to the car. Of course I will bird trying to be careful enough to not count
the rarity again.
I tend to concur with his within the count comment as well. This year I am
quadrupling our highest count of Anna's ever. How can that be? Well I stumbled
upon a house with 10 feeders with 10 birds at least let alone the ones in the
bushes around them. In addition - had one new feeder counter in another town
who has 7 feeders who alone matched our previous high. My point is neither of
these folks are new to our area, they have lived in Bandon and the road to
Coquille for a dozen years. In short the birds have always been here, just not
discovered by our field teams and not encouraged to participate in all the
years we downplayed the feeders. I think that is Lars point. Not everything on
Ebird is trustworthy, but to pretend most of those birds are not here is
totally ridiculous. I understand citizen science but I also understand real
science. Do you want a count as accurate as possible or not?
Harv
Sent from my BlackBerry - the most secure mobile device
From: larspernorgren@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: January 5, 2017 5:33 PM
To: obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reply-to: larspernorgren@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: [obol] questions about CBC protocol
I found several responses to the protocol questions downright assinine.
If I walk two miles out Bayocean Spit then two miles back, you can bet your
sweet ass I'm going to record 4 miles. My eyes weren't closed, my ears weren't
shut. The effort one way is the same as the effort the other, and most of the
individual birds NEVER get counted. Geoff apparently needs to find himself a
life.
As for eBird records on count day-if the bird was present on count day
inside the count circle, why the hell not count it? Geoff's concern about
double-counting is absurd. And PLENTY of "official" counters don't make
complete tallies, in fact most of them. The number of participants that
don't/can't bird by ear is substantial. In fact they probably constitute a
majority. The guy comes across as a control freak rather than a scientifically
oriented pragmatist.
Lars
